Football as a gateway to a new life: How two orless brothers found their feet in Germany and sport helped them – starting with a refugee team.
Thousands upon thousands of faces and yet each one has a story of its own. The long-term documentary by “Sport inside” tells the story of the brothers Elidon (18) and Erion Bilali (15) from Tirana, the Albanian capital. All episodes of the previous series can be found further down on this page.
After their father disappeared without a trace and their mother’s sudden death, Elidon and Erion were left parentless. There is no remaining family capable of taking care of her.
So they decide to just try their luck in Germany – because there you can earn money with football and build a life. If you’re good. And they learned to play football from an early age in big clubs. And so the Bilali brothers ended up on the Balkan route in 2015; the only German word they know at this point is: “Asyl”.
Arrival, school, training – and football
In 2023, eight years later, they are actually German. Astonishing, because Albanian asylum seekers are considered “economic refugees” and are usually sent back straight away. But Elidon and Erion Bilali are among the only 0.3 percent who are granted toleration in Germany – because they are orphans and the younger one is not allowed to stay without the older one.
The documentary tells the story chronologically from 2015 to the present: from their arrival in Germany, through their new lives at school and training, on football pitches and in their respective homes, including the wedding. All of this is happening while Germany is constantly having heated debates about migration, shortages of skilled workers, integration, foreign infiltration and border security.
Football as a gateway to a new life
We see how the Bilalis are discovered in the initial reception center for asylum seekers in Rees on the Lower Rhine by the coach of a refugee team, who immediately introduces them to a trial training session with a Bundesliga club. How these big dreams fail and they wait in the refugee accommodation in Rheine for deportation until the caretaker there realizes that Elidon could be exactly the playmaker he is looking for for his district league team.
And in fact, football ultimately turns out to be the gateway to a new life for the brothers, albeit completely different than planned. It’s not the great career that they have – the Oberliga and Kreisliga are their sphere of influence today. But we see how one thing leads to another for them: the apprenticeship with the club sponsor, resulting in a job, the temporary, then permanent residence permit, a new home, new friends. A new life.
A film by Tom Theunissen. Editor: Uli Loke