From Homeless Shelters to Playing for Team Canada at The Homeless World Cup | Michael Fredson

Sport has a way of giving people something to hold onto. Michael Fredson is helping build an entire organization around that idea.

Michael is the owner of Manticore Books in Orillia and Chair of the Board of the Canadian Street Soccer Association, Canada’s partner organization for the Homeless World Cup. In this conversation, he breaks down what it actually looks like to use soccer as a social tool, what the Homeless World Cup is and why it’s unlike any other sporting event in the world, and what happened when Team Canada went to Oslo. The stories from that trip alone are worth the listen.

Please note that this transcript was made through a software and it may not be entirely accurate.

00;00;02;14 – 00;00;11;03
Unknown
You’re listening to the Behind the Village podcast, where we invite you to join us on a journey to understand how to live a life worth living.

00;00;11;06 – 00;00;29;15
Unknown
You may know Michael Fredson as the owner of Manticore Books. What you may not know is how passionate he is about the Homeless World Cup. When we spoke a few months back, he mentioned the incredible organization that supports marginalized communities through the power of sport.

00;00;29;18 – 00;00;52;15
Unknown
We call ourselves the Canadian Street Soccer Association. And, we are a group that what we aim to do is we aim to bring soccer programs to, people, kind of like we sort of use the term like marginalized people. So homelessness being one of the big ones, but also each one of our programs and kind of different and in the different communities focuses on different things.

00;00;52;15 – 00;01;24;10
Unknown
You know, sometimes one of our communities is almost solely mental health. You know, like working closely with like the CMJ and, people in that, another one of the the group that is one of our bigger ones is on the Cover Island and deals really predominantly with the First Nations people there. So, it, it varies, but it’s just kind of all these marginalized groups and we just go out and, you know, it’s a simple premise, but it’s just we just go out and kick a ball around and have some fun and try to build a little bit more community and give people just, you know, something to do that’s not their problems.

00;01;24;10 – 00;01;44;16
Unknown
You know, we don’t operate like we don’t operate as a league, you know, like we’re not we’re not a soccer development program. We’re not a league. We are we we use sport as a social tool. We use it as a tool to bring people together and to, you know, just kind of structure their lives a little bit differently.

00;01;44;16 – 00;02;04;27
Unknown
So it’s not the focus isn’t the soccer. The soccer is just the tool, you know, and we’re really focused on, building community and just giving people a different voice, a different, different thing to do. And, and so it changes when, when you’re not looking at the sport, when you’re just literally like, hey, let’s go quick call around.

00;02;05;00 – 00;02;21;11
Unknown
You know, that that it changes what, what you’re kind of trying to trying to get we’re trying to get out of it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s Amelia did it’s open to everyone. It’s it’s they’re free programs. There’s no cost to like we we as the organization get the raise the money and everything to like do to pay for everything.

00;02;21;11 – 00;02;43;02
Unknown
So there’s no cost to the participants. You know when, when people are, when, when a lot of people are either in, homeless shelter programs, addiction recovery programs, all those kind of programs that that we have, most of the focus is always on job skills, job skills, job skills, employment, employment. Like it’s really the main focus of a lot of these programs.

00;02;43;04 – 00;03;01;04
Unknown
And not saying that there’s a lot like there’s a lot of great people working and really trying to help people and everything, but not about the individuals, but about the system and the program. The goal is the the, jobs and employment kind of thing. So, we it’s funny because we kind of think that it’s like we actually provide those as well.

00;03;01;08 – 00;03;28;03
Unknown
Teamwork. You know, individual responsibility, you know, improving yourself, all those kind of things. But we don’t do it through the same terminology, and we don’t do it in the it’s almost like a, a side effect rather than the main goal of, of what we do. Right. But we absolutely to develop those kind of skills and a lot of the, one of the really great things, too, about our program is that this is a worldwide, thing.

00;03;28;03 – 00;03;47;03
Unknown
Like, there there’s these programs all over the world in, in like 70 different countries. Some of the programs, it really is it’s incredible the way that the Scottish program has actually just integrated with their university and college systems and so people now are kind of like going through the soccer program, and they’re actually able to start going and looking at like university credits and stuff.

00;03;47;03 – 00;04;05;09
Unknown
And so it’s cool. It’s all these skills that come from. Yeah, like from the power of sport. And and it really is the power of sports put to its ultimate, ultimate use. So what we sort of look at ourselves as like this three tier kind of thing. We had at at the main level we have and the bulk of our participants in everything is our weekly programs.

00;04;05;11 – 00;04;23;13
Unknown
And our weekly programs are just like like we’ve talked a little bit about already. They’re open to everybody. We usually partner up with different organizations in our communities. And then kind of our mid-level league, the next level up is sort of like our national tournaments and our like regional tournaments and that kind of stuff a little bit more like soccer than, our weekly stuff.

00;04;23;16 – 00;04;54;15
Unknown
And then our at our top level is we’re are, we’re the partner organization for Canada for the homeless role Club, which is, an amazing organization, an amazing tournament. That, has been going on for 20 years. And it is a tournament, international soccer tournament for, homelessness to raise awareness. But all the participants are probably the better terminology is unhoused because homelessness, the way that they they categorize it is it’s quite a broad category.

00;04;54;15 – 00;05;19;14
Unknown
It’s not just a shelter. It’s like, you know, different levels of of house kind of idea. And the goal of our organization and what we’re slowly getting into is, yeah, everybody, everybody in your organization will at some point be lived, lived experience. So they will have gone through the programs, they will have, you know, like taken different steps up through the pyramid of, of of jobs and positions and everything and.

00;05;19;14 – 00;05;40;21
Unknown
Yeah. And actually will we’re hoping to put ourselves all of a job. We’ve got, two, two people that went to our, the, the Oso tournament. We’ve got two of them now working and running, their local programs and, a couple more kind of involved in in different ways now, like in the organization and kind of a little bit more like promotional or social media type stuff.

00;05;40;21 – 00;06;03;16
Unknown
So it’s we’re starting we’re we’re kind of slowly building up to that now that’s really cool. Yeah. So where you’ve, you’re in BC, you’re in. So we heard Quebec, we’ve got two in BC now we’ve got Vancouver Island, Victoria, Calgary, Alberta. And then we’re, we’re working on the other, prairie provinces, but we have to jump all the way over Ontario now.

00;06;03;18 – 00;06;28;21
Unknown
We’ve got, Brampton program, Mississauga, Toronto. And then we go into, Montreal and Montreal, probably our biggest, and then followed by Vancouver Island. There’s a power in sport, you know, I mean, it’s it’s it’s huge. I mean, sporting as an industry as a business is huge and it’s massive. But it’s because we love it. There’s something at its core that is just quite amazing about it.

00;06;28;21 – 00;06;51;08
Unknown
And and when you harness it like we’re trying to do, to use it to kind of just bring people along, you know, it’s amazing. There was a story of a gentleman. He is he’s actually a key. And he, he’s told the story in multiple places. So that’s why I don’t care about telling you. But he, he’s now he’s actually one of the head refs for the homeschool club.

00;06;51;11 – 00;07;14;19
Unknown
But he started out as a participant in the original, Street Soccer Canada program, and, here had just, you know, kind of had a mental breakdown and a whole bunch of issues from, he was a refugee and just dealing with a lot of those issues and ended up in a homeless shelter. And, you know, he was he was saying he was at that point where, you know, I’m I’m going to commit suicide.

00;07;14;19 – 00;07;30;26
Unknown
I don’t want this anymore. I’m done. There’s nothing for me here. I’m done. And then somebody came into the shelter and was just, hey, you you want to come back tomorrow? That’s kind of like the no, no, I don’t have any shorts or whatever, because, like, I don’t matter. Come on. I got I guess I’m sure. Sorry. Come on.

00;07;30;28 – 00;07;47;20
Unknown
Okay. Go. Ball. So you know he’s he’s telling the story. He’s like he was like, okay, fine, this guy’s bugging me. Fine. I’ll just go and I’ll go kick a ball around. And then so he went and he played soccer and he’s like, of course it made me feel more alive than I had for months and months and months.

00;07;47;23 – 00;08;05;19
Unknown
But just as he was leaving the guy was just like, great, I’ll see you next week, okay? And he said, that simple sentence was, you know, when he got back to the shelter, it was like, well, maybe I don’t want to let him down. He said he’d see me next week and then he and then he went next week.

00;08;05;22 – 00;08;26;13
Unknown
And then same thing happened. See you next week. Hey, that was a great game today. I’ll see you next week. And he’s like it just kept going. And it just gave him something to kind of hold on to all the time. And you know, there was no there was no magic. There was no there wasn’t really even anything that was like, oh, this is like serious training of how to deal with somebody.

00;08;26;13 – 00;08;42;18
Unknown
It was literally just, let’s go kickball around. And that was fun, wasn’t it? I’ll see you next week and we’ll do the same thing. Okay. And that simple act, you know, changed his life. Where now he’s, you know, he owns his own business and he runs it, and now he’s a a referee for the Homeless World Cup every year.

00;08;42;18 – 00;09;05;07
Unknown
And he travels all over the world doing this. And it’s from just a let’s go kick a ball around. You know, there’s a simple power in sport that we’ve never really we’ve never used probably to its full capacity, you know, and and, and and it’s amazing. It’s why we all play sports as kids and yeah, sometimes it’s the toxicity of it as we get.

00;09;05;07 – 00;09;24;01
Unknown
That’s why we get out of it, you know, and, and but we all kind of missed that. We missed that that enjoyment of that sport when we were just kids kicking a ball around. Yeah. You know, and so we’re we’re simply just trying to do that. We’re simply just trying to bring that back to that love of, let’s just go kick a ball around and let’s just have some fun.

00;09;24;08 – 00;09;38;17
Unknown
And the power of what that can do is it’s been it’s been crazy. It’s been mind blowing to to be a part of, to see what that could do when the sentence seems like, and how’s the how’s that going to make anybody change?

00;09;38;19 – 00;09;46;00
Unknown
After understanding more about the Canadian Street Soccer Association, I needed to hear more about the Homeless World Cup.

00;09;46;03 – 00;10;05;06
Unknown
It’s headquartered in, Scotland, and, it’s started, through the founder, Mel Young, and just as that idea that, you know, sport and soccer as a social, as a tool for social change and he, he started the tournament and, it’s grown into something amazing and huge.

00;10;05;06 – 00;10;30;26
Unknown
Like, I think I said before, there 70 member countries, not every country is always able to go to each version of like each year of the home almost World Cup, which, sorry, it happens every year as well. And it moves around from place to place. They, they kind of move it in different locations of the world to, to make it so that, you know, it’s, it’s a different opportunity for anybody else to come.

00;10;30;28 – 00;10;47;08
Unknown
You know, like last year was in Oslo, a lot of the South American countries couldn’t afford to bring a go up to Oslo right. Next year in Mexico City, so probably some of the European countries now won’t be able to go to Mexico City. But now all the South American countries will hopefully have the chance that they can afford to go to it.

00;10;47;08 – 00;11;04;06
Unknown
Right. So, the it’s a it’s an amazing organization. The member countries do have to kind of fund their way to it, but when, when their, their the Homeless World Cup takes care of everybody. When. Oh that’s cool. Once you’re there, you know, like they house you, they, they, they feed you, they do all that kind of stuff.

00;11;04;06 – 00;11;29;28
Unknown
And they work with a lot of groups locally and everything. So it’s an amazing organization, but it’s also just this amazing sporting tournament. It it’s phenomenal. It is unlike, you know, being involved in sports in soccer my whole life. It is unlike anything I’ve ever, ever been a part of and seen. And, you know, even in the way that they set the tournament up, is that.

00;11;30;00 – 00;11;56;26
Unknown
Yeah, there’s the big trophy of the Homeless World Cup. There’s I should actually probably start and say that it’s like there’s there’s a women’s division and, and, mixed division, men’s division. And then each of those divisions, there’s the, the almost World Cup, but then there’s also multiple tiers of trophies afterwards as well, so that you don’t just show up and play your first three games and then you’re done.

00;11;56;29 – 00;12;19;19
Unknown
You sit around for like seven more days doing nothing. They actually what the way to the tournament works is that you play your first group stage and then you get sorted again and you kind of break out into the next tier, and then you play that group stage and then those teams get sorted out again. And so you keep you kind of start by the like second or third group stage.

00;12;19;19 – 00;12;38;27
Unknown
You’re now starting to play teams that are more at your, your, your actual skill level and your development level and are with that. So it it really changes the way that the sport happens is that, you know, typically in a tournament, a lot of times it gets worse and worse and worse, and then you’re just sitting there on your hands going like, I guess I’ll watch the rest of the games.

00;12;38;27 – 00;13;00;09
Unknown
Great. Yeah. Well, yeah. Whereas in this tournament you’re, you’re playing now, you’re playing the entire tournament. So you play every day for the whole ten days and then you’re, you’re playing teams. By the end of it, you’re playing teams that are actually kind of at your level, like you’re now competitive. You’re actually having really competitive games. And and so it’s such a confidence builder.

00;13;00;09 – 00;13;24;07
Unknown
Like it just feels really good being in that tournament that. Yeah I mean the first couple days it’s like you know 20 to nothing, 20 to 5, ten the two, you know like oh yeah okay. That’s a little bit painful. But then by the end by the end it’s you know the games are 3 or 4, you know, five against three, you know, like it’s, it’s it’s really they become tight, really close knit games and you just feel really good.

00;13;24;08 – 00;13;48;11
Unknown
Like the players just feel better about themselves. They feel that like, oh yeah. Like I am competitive. I can do this. You know it. It’s just such a phenomenal tournament and such a simple structure, but it drastically changes the whole feel of how it works. And you know, and our players had a really great experience where, we were playing.

00;13;48;11 – 00;14;09;22
Unknown
I think it was the second day we were playing against Poland and they were very large, very good soccer players. And so, you know, we kind of went and it was like, hey, like we’re from Canada. Like we haven’t been here for, you know, ten years. Can we just, you know, like, maybe we’re not as competitive as we normally like, you know, you maybe want to be.

00;14;09;25 – 00;14;23;04
Unknown
And I mean, they were great. They were like, oh, absolutely. No problem. You know? And so then when we played them, they they just kind of gave us a little bit of space. They didn’t they didn’t take it easy on us. They didn’t make it easy for. But they just they just kind of gave us space when we had the ball.

00;14;23;04 – 00;14;40;11
Unknown
They would just kind of come right up to us and just not like tackle us and take the ball. I was just like, okay, go ahead. I think we still lost like 10 to 2 or something. But you know, it. They it was there was a very like there was honestly a very like great sportsmanship about that game.

00;14;40;14 – 00;14;56;04
Unknown
That’s really nice. Yeah. It was wonderful. And then at the end of the tournament, Spain, Spain came because we started to get our group and like I say, we start to kind of play against teams that are more at our skill levels and everything. And so we started to win some games. We started to play really well after this.

00;14;56;07 – 00;15;15;13
Unknown
And then, the Spanish team comes to us and I’m like the second to last day or something. And they are kind of like, hey, you guys are really good. Like, do you mind maybe like bringing it down a little bit, can we just kind of have a little bit of a from here a game. And so our players just had this great experience that we had to go ask a team at first to say, hey, can you take it easy on us?

00;15;15;15 – 00;15;32;12
Unknown
And then at the end of the tournament we had another team say, hey, can you take it easy on us? You know, and and just like it was just such an amazing feeling for them, like, wow. Like, okay, like the tables of turn. We’ve we’ve looked we’ll look where we’ve come in five days, you know. So yeah, it was fun.

00;15;32;12 – 00;15;47;22
Unknown
All of it was really great. It’s, have you watched any, any of the games or seen it on YouTube or anything yet? No, I’m going to I haven’t I would love to, but you can just go on YouTube and just, you know, look for Homeless World Cup and and it’s you can, you can see a whole bunch of games.

00;15;47;22 – 00;16;07;05
Unknown
It’s really amazing. It’s, it’s a really different version of soccer, which is why it’s called street soccer. It’s it’s a four on four within like a basketball type court, like, so it’s the size of a basketball type court, but it’s it’s more it honestly. I mean that’s Canadians. I’m like, it’s a hockey rink. You know, it’s got boards and everything.

00;16;07;07 – 00;16;27;01
Unknown
And and it’s four on four with it being the rules being a little bit more shifted to like offense. So that when you’re defending, you can only have two of your players back versus the three attacking players are in your head. So it’s just it’s kind of it’s just it’s a little more geared to a fast paced, offensive kind of soccer.

00;16;27;03 – 00;16;46;15
Unknown
But it’s it’s very different, like very high technical touching, like very quick, quick boom, boom, boom. The boards are in play. It’s it’s, changing on the fly like hockey. Like it, it’s really funny because as I’m watching it, like the first few times I watch you, when I go on the wall, I was just like, did a Canadian Ventana Sport because it honestly looks like a cross between hockey and soccer.

00;16;46;18 – 00;17;12;04
Unknown
Yeah. Cool. Yeah, it’s it’s fascinating. But yeah, it’s, it’s it’s a great it’s a great version of it because it’s really accessible. You know if you’re, if you’re not an athlete, if you haven’t been playing soccer for 20, 25 years, like some of our participants, especially the ones that come from the shelters, you can’t go play on an 11 on 11 full size soccer pitch like, you know, the first time you run like that’s it.

00;17;12;04 – 00;17;36;21
Unknown
I’m done know. Well, I gotta go sit on the sidelines, right? Like I’m exhausted. But this this version of soccer is it’s completely accessible, like, it’s there’s there’s seven minute halves. So it’s a 14 minute game. Very quick, very fast. But you’re not necessarily like running those massive lengths. You’re just kind of on the field and moving and like catch the ball quickly and move and everything.

00;17;36;21 – 00;18;03;02
Unknown
So it’s an incredibly accessible version of the game as well, which is, again, just this brilliance of what the Homeless World Cup has really kind of come up with. They’ve come up with this great tournament structure, they’ve come up with this amazing version of it, with the rules that really kind of make it flow, but make it really accessible to it, to non super fit trained athletes and yeah, it’s just it’s and besides all that, the tournament itself is, is not about soccer.

00;18;03;03 – 00;18;23;13
Unknown
It’s about the community and about the connections and you know the game. The night before we played England, the English coach came over and said, hey, want wanna hang out tonight? And so the two teams hung out for like 3 or 4 hours and then and then the next day when they played, when, you know, we’d score a goal and the English team would be cheering and be like, oh, that was amazing.

00;18;23;13 – 00;18;46;16
Unknown
Like, what a great shot that was, guys, you know, and they still beat us. They did say there was a moment that they were a little bit worried they wouldn’t be able to. So we felt pretty good about that. But oh nice. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean it’s just it’s again it’s an experience that you just don’t see in here in a sports tournament where we hung out with the team before and, you know, and then we cheer them on the rest of the tournament.

00;18;46;18 – 00;19;05;06
Unknown
They cheered us on the rest of the tournament because our players had made connections, you know, and then, we played Netherlands and we beat them that one day. And then we went on a ferry tour on the island, on, on the, in the, in the afternoon around the islands with them, you know, and because the sport is the games are just part of it.

00;19;05;06 – 00;19;26;24
Unknown
They’re not really the reason you’re there. Yeah. You know, so it, it’s it’s just it’s like nothing you can kind of understand until you’ve kind of really like seen it and understand that it’s like the sport is really the side project. Yeah. So we take we take eight players with us to the, to the tournament. Because again it’s 4 or 4.

00;19;26;24 – 00;19;43;09
Unknown
Right. So it’s kind of easy to two full shifts of it. So we take eight players and then there’s also a coach and a manager and that’s officially kind of Team Canada sort of thing. And then you’re kind of allowed to take as many as, you know, as many support people as you kind of need or different things.

00;19;43;09 – 00;20;00;25
Unknown
And so we took I think we had 4 or 5 extra people as well. So, you know, it’s not quite 1 to 1. But it usually, you know, it kind of helps for most teams if you can do, you know, like maybe 1 to 1 or maybe like not quite 2 to 1 kind of thing, but just it’s just with support people, it’s it’s overwhelming.

00;20;00;25 – 00;20;19;12
Unknown
It’s very overwhelming for I mean, most of the participants, I mean, they’ve never been on a plane for a lot of them, right then to travel to a completely different country and to participate in this, it’s it’s it’s emotionally big for them as well as as just, you know, I mean you’re playing it sports Toronto wearing the maple leaf on your on your shirt right.

00;20;19;12 – 00;20;32;25
Unknown
We set it up so that you know like we all met in the same place in in Toronto. And then we all, took the same flight, you know. And so it wasn’t, wasn’t here and there kind of thing. We all like, we went as a team to and then we left as a team kind of thing too.

00;20;32;25 – 00;20;51;01
Unknown
Right. So it really, really bring brings it all together. And yeah, it was amazing to I think two of the people, yeah, two of the people in Montreal, they, they have jobs now. They’ve moved out of the shelters. They’ve gotten their own apartments and all that. And it’s, you know, it’s not I’m not going to say it’s obviously because of us.

00;20;51;01 – 00;21;11;20
Unknown
And what what happened with with Oslo. But a lot of what they experienced there, they were. Yeah. You know what? I’ve got this I can do this. You know what what what what I just did and accomplished in that in those ten days. I can do this. Yeah, yeah. And even even for for seldom. Sometimes it’s because, I mean, of course it’s travel.

00;21;11;20 – 00;21;29;00
Unknown
So you have to have your passport. You got to have any visa stuff that you have to. So you have to have all this kind of paperwork together and for, for a few of our participants, that was a big push for them. And a big thing for them is that it’s like, you gotta get your ID together, you got to get this paperwork together, you got to get this functioning.

00;21;29;02 – 00;21;45;17
Unknown
And that was a big change of like, well, I mean, of course I’m going to spend the time doing that because I’m going to get a chance to go play for Team Canada and the whole Hospital Cup in Oslo. Of course, I’ll do that. But the other really amazing thing about the World Cup is that, you can only go once as a player.

00;21;45;20 – 00;22;05;17
Unknown
I only go once. So the whole point is that it’s meant to kind of roll over so that it’s always bringing that experience to new people. It’s not so that you can build your team and stack it for the next, you know, 15 years and you’ve got the team that no one can be like, it’s you can, players can only go once.

00;22;05;20 – 00;22;26;28
Unknown
They can go again later when they’re like coaches or something, you know, like that kind of thing. But they and actually a lot of the, a lot of the established programs in Europe, almost all the coaches and managers were all players from, you know, 10 or 15 years ago kind of thing. Right? Again, that lived experience, kind of a piece that goes along with all these programs worldwide.

00;22;27;01 – 00;22;51;21
Unknown
But, it’s it’s again, it’s a really just powerful tool that they have that can only go once and, and, and it’s time for somebody else to have that opportunity now. Right. How can, I guess people across Canada, how can they support the organization? So our, our website, Canadian Streets. Yeah. Canadian street soccer. Okay. It’s, you know, there’s a there’s a donate button there.

00;22;51;23 – 00;23;09;12
Unknown
There’s also, you know, you can, volunteer as a, sorry, put your name forward as a volunteer and everything. Like I say, we’re sort of in that we’re growing a little bit slower right now as we get our framework a little bit more established. But we have this pool of volunteers and people that are just ready and saying, like, I’m ready whenever you whenever you guys are.

00;23;09;12 – 00;23;32;16
Unknown
So, it even though we might not have anything yet for wherever you are, you know, having your name and kind of the database of volunteer list is really great. Like any nonprofit charity. Right. It’s it’s it’s money. It’s. Yeah, it’s always the big the biggest help is, is for anybody, you know, following us on socials and everything and just kind of talking about us getting involved and all that.

00;23;32;22 – 00;23;38;01
Unknown
It helps a lot.

00;23;38;03 – 00;23;49;15
Unknown
What an inspiring and incredibly uplifting organization. I can’t wait to see their programing expand and for more people to experience the power of sport in their lives.

00;23;49;18 – 00;24;09;07
Unknown
Thank you for listening to the entire episode. All the links and info you heard in this conversation will be featured in the show notes on our website. If you’d like to know more about anything we mentioned in this episode, make sure to check Villager Magazine Talks Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening from.

00;24;09;09 – 00;24;18;01
Unknown
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