The no less talented Stanley Matthews said he used to shoot a ball against a wall and dribble on kitchen chairs for hours as a child.
Pelé, Matthews and many others. Generations of later professionals learned to play football on the street or on football pitches.
Many public soccer fields are deserted
“School takes up a lot of time. That means you don’t finish at 1 or 1.30 p.m. like it used to – and you don’t know where to go. That’s why you went to the soccer field before training and from the soccer field straight to training – or sometimes after training again on the soccer field. And in some cases club football has become so dominant that the boys in middle-class leagues train three times a week. And you are no longer so rooted in the districts or in the whole Streets. There used to be street teams – they don’t exist anymore.”
“Street Football Club” in Kreuzberg and Neukölln
Zeljko Ristic has been resisting this development for a long time. The street worker works for the social agency Outreach, which is active in eleven Berlin districts with mobile youth work. In 2021, Ristic founded the “Street Football Club” project, which focuses primarily on Kreuzberg and Neukölln.
“During the pandemic period, we realized that everything was closed. I heard that a youngster somehow managed to get a hall – and they were illegally playing football inside. And I actually found the idea quite charming that they organized themselves. And then I contacted the young man. This gave birth to the idea that we started activating street football again during the pandemic. The football pitches were full again – and that’s how a small movement came about.”
Ristic was a youth coach at Hertha BSC
But Ristic has not only been a street worker for many years. He was also a coach in Berlin youth and amateur football for a long time. For almost 13 years he worked as a youth coach at Hertha BSC, where he was already organizing street football tournaments.
I see street football as a reform pedagogical approach because, in principle, young people organize themselves. It is their own world that they create for themselves and their own rules, their freedom. And they also play freely and actually teach themselves their own stuff.
“We noticed that the need is there, that it is a life of its own. Such an urban lifestyle: Street is also street music, street painting, street art, urbanity. So whether it’s street art or graffiti. Hip-hop music is also their way of life from the young people and they noticed that it merges together quite well, and I think there is always an appreciation of what they do.”
Street worker Zeljko Ristic founded the “Street Football Club”.© outreach
“So street football is not forced with strategy and not with so many rules, I would say. You can just let everything out there, and road is just a bit harder on concrete.”
“You clear your head. Just on a day like this when you have nothing planned, you call your friends out or something. It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing. It just takes a ball – something that spins.”
Different atmosphere than organized games
Street football lives from a completely different atmosphere than organized football matches. Much freer and more informal.
“I would think it’s just a collective gathering of friends mostly. I also feel that they want to play football with each other because it’s a different game. It’s more teasing, playing against each other, teasing each other, throwing nice words at each other, then also measuring that you might be the better one that day. Also a bit to celebrate yourself.”
Different team sizes
The game is played with or without a board in different team sizes, often three against three, with smaller goals. Although street football uses a few common football terms such as free kicks or penalties, the rules are not as strict as in clubs. Usually there are no referees. If so, then the young people or adults they sometimes play against do it themselves.
Young people at the football project run by street worker Ristic© outreach
“Street football also consists in the fact that you really have to play against older people to prove yourself. I am of the opinion that if you have such age categories, then this is not what used to be normal on the football field.
Project promotes initiative and creativity
“You have to allow it to be free because if you try to integrate it, it’s not free anymore. You then try to squeeze the free space into structures – and that doesn’t work.”
“Street Football Club” receives funding
The “Street Football Club” is supported with funds from the State Commission “Berlin Against Violence”. With his commitment, he also wants to help prevent young people from becoming criminals. Initially, funding has been secured for another year.
In order to be able to plan better, however, Zeljko Ristic would like regular financing. This would primarily benefit the young people in Berlin who meet at the “Street Football Club”. A project that has become an important starting point for her in her free time.