Peter Dench – Football Hidden Story
“In disaster areas, war zones and urban wastelands, football keeps humanity alive. It brings nations together and promotes unity. It encourages equality and generates pride and self-belief. It has the power to heal and to help, to motivate, to give freedom to dreams and empower a generation. There are millions of people playing the game or helping it to flourish who find that football brings a positive dimension to their lives.
Away from the billionaire owned clubs with it’s multi-million pound players, Football’s Hidden Story, is a series of emotive human interest photographs showing the positive impact that football has had at grassroot level on individuals and communities all around the world.”
A fenced soccer pitch provides a safe oasis for kids being coached on the Spirit of Soccer program. Spirit of Soccer is a grassroots children’s charity founded by soccer coach Scott Lee that aims to reduce child casualties by landmines and explosive remnants of war. They do this by delivering Mine Risk Education through soccer coaching clinics to children living in densely mined areas of the world including Iraq.
Players from the Liberian national amputee football team go through some warm up exercises before a match in Monrovia.
Team strategies are chalked onto the wall in one of the changing rooms at the Sylvio Cator Stadium in Port-au-Prince.
In an amputee football team the goalkeeper has both legs but only one arm while the outfield players have both arms but only one leg.
Brazil
A tackle goes flying in on a player from the Liberian national amputee football team during a competative game in Monrovia.
16 year old Laura practises her football skills near her home in Castle Bromwich near Birmingham. She admits to having once been a bit of a tearaway missing lessons and bunking off school. When told by a teacher that if she didn’t work harder playing football would be forbidden she turned her life around. Laura is now achieving at school and studying for coaching and refereeing badges.
Gypsy children clutching posters of Romanian gypsy and genuine soccer star Bãnel Nicoliþã wait to perform a traditional dance at an anti-racism football game played in the Romanian capital Bucharest.
more images and other interesting project on Peter Dench website; found on lensculture