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“They already have their eyes on him,” says Jean-Claude Munyezamu, Mehalhel’s former coach who first got the boy into the game when he saw the then six-year-old kick a ball around with impressive speed and footwork.

On Monday afternoon, I meet up with Munyezamu, Mehalhel and his dad Mar, not far from the housing complex all call home in the city’s southwest Glenbrook neighbourhood.

As the 14-year-old and his former coach kick the ball around a field, it’s clear that the end of the latter’s coaching hasn’t spelled the end of their friendship. “He’s my buddy now,” says Mehalhel, who was also invited last year to a training camp in Arizona, where he and 21 other boys were chosen for the England camp.

Their rock-solid connection is something experienced by many other kids in Mehalhel’s neighbourhood, one that is populated with a large immigrant and refugee population. Back in the late 2000s, Munyezamu, who came to Canada from Rwanda in the late 1990s, noticed that far too many local youngsters were short on opportunities for recreation and sport.

He started a neighbourhood soccer club, which in time would be known as Soccer Without Boundaries (soccerwithoutboundaries.org), a registered sports charity. Today, it’s a full-fledged league with two locations, one in Glenbrook and the other in the northeast, that focus on getting low-income and new Canadian kids in the game.

Mehalhel, whom his dad says ran straight to the soccer balls at the toy store as a toddler, revealed his talents early. “I knew all he needed was to put in the 10,000 hours of practice,” says Munyezamu.