By Julia Bicknell
A football match in Prague, involving former international players, was the centrepiece at an international conference held in the Czechia last week, illustrating how team spirit can build positive relationships.
The exhibition match at the Great Strahov Stadium, organised in collaboration with AC Sparta Prague, was designed to engage young people in the cause of the freedom of religion and belief.
Jeff Mostyn, the recently retired chairman of AFC Bournemouth, and the former Pakistan international Kashif Siddiqi addressed about 100 government ministers from 37 countries who attended the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance conference
Mostyn steered AFC Bournemouth to extraordinary success and arrived for the conference in Prague to share how his childhood experience of discrimination had led him to join Football for Peace (FFP).
This is a movement aiming to use the soft power of football to build communities and to foster understanding.
It was started by two players: Siddiqi, who has encouraged the involvement of British Asians in football and played in England, the United States and Pakistan; and the legendary Chilean footballer Elias Figueroa.
FFP partnered with the conference hosts to hold a challenge match, pitting a few former Premier League players such as Oumar Niasse (Everton) and Steven Caulker (Tottenham Hotspur and England), against Czech veterans such as Antonin Panenka — who famously hit the penalty that won AC Sparta the UEFA European Championship against West Germany in extra time in 1976. (The style of his delicately chipped penalty kick is now known as a “panenka”).
Before the players headed out into the biting cold and swirling snow in the Great Strahov Stadium, they took time to explain why they were subjecting themselves to such an ordeal.
Mostyn, captaining the Blue Team, explained how he left school at 15, with no qualifications “except one in truancy”.
“The reason I didn’t go to school often was because I was bullied. There was a lot of antisemitism in Manchester … I think that, subliminally, it’s affected my journey and how I see life. Fast forward 60 years and I find myself a financial adviser by default — because I couldn’t even take my own advice. Buying a football club was not the brightest decision ever!” he said.
“Football is a very different business from anything else. You have your entire business at risk, dependent on what happens on the pitch, which is beyond your control! It’s unlike any other business.
“And what I tried to establish from the get-go, while we still languished in the lower divisions, was that the manager’s dressing room, the inner sanctum with all the players, and my dressing room, which was upstairs, were both sacrosanct.”
Mostyn added: “And we had one thing linking the two, and that was a common goal: success. And through our incredible journey from Division Two to Premier League, the thing I learnt was that community was the most important thing. Because, in the Premier, there are over 5 billion people watching globally, including syndicated games.
“So how can we reach out to people through the power of football, which I think is one of the most powerful tools on earth, to try to bring peace, tranquillity, and harmony to many areas of deprivation?
“You can only start in your community. I’m a proud ambassador for our community sports trust. Within that, we teach over 5,000 children each week in our conurbation about the pitfalls of antisocial behaviour, drug and alcohol abuse. And respect for each other’s religion.
“This for me is the most important thing. A culture of equality, diversity and inclusion. Very few chairmen have ever got involved with this.
“But for me, the absolute rock — the cornerstone — of how to treat people properly has been equality. And, as a result, the players, and the coaches can go into schools to teach respect. Most people who go into schools to teach respect are the parents, the teachers. For me, that’s a given.
“In multicultural classrooms, from the age of five or six, I reflect back to my childhood where I was bullied. Equality, diversity and inclusion are in my heart, and it’s a great privilege and pride to be here today, to try to make the world a better place, irrespective of race or religion or gender.”
Costa Nhamoinesu, a former captain of AC Sparta Prague who is from Zimbabwe, then described how he had been able to get to know his fellow team-mates there, despite language barriers, and how they had ended up donating bags of clothes to send when times were tough in his home country.
The last to speak was Oumar Niasse, who described how, when he left Senegal for Turkey, there was provision for him as a Muslim player: “There were prayer rooms in every ground. My Dad had taught me to respect everyone.
“However, when I moved to Russia it was very different. I had to tell my managers ‘I pray five times every day.’ They in turn would explain, ‘Oumar is coming late because he’s been praying’.”
Oumar talked about the importance of keeping to his spiritual practice “There’s a lot of money coming in between the ages of 18 and 35, and it’s difficult to keep your head.” But, he added: “You can go to your manager and say ‘I need to break my fast now’ and he will explain to the team, and everyone will be happy.”
The Blue Team beat the Orange Team 5-3 in heavy snowfall and Mostyn tweeted: “Peace Match at Sparta Prague was a huge success. An honour being amongst sporting legends. Congratulations to all the participants, especially my Blue Team, whilst we were humble in victory it was a sweet moment to cherish.”
Julia Bicknell is a former BBC reporter, now freelance, who focuses on reporting about freedom of religion or belief issues
