young soccers

inclusion against radicalization

Pubblicato il da giovanna

details of interview

Role of the Interviewed: amateur football player

Age: 22

Gender: male

Nationality: Albanian

Type of radicalization: ethnic discrimination, social radicalization

Historical period collocation: 2014

Date/Country of the Interview: 19/09/2018, Greece

Interviewer: KEAN – Cell of Alternative Youth Activities

KEAN

Have you witnessed or experienced personal situations of radicalization during your activity in sport organizations? What kind of radicalizations have you detected? (Gender, politics, religion, racism, crime, homophobia…)

player

I am coming from Albania and I have been living in Greece for ten years. My parents migrated from Albania to Greece and settled in Athens when I was 12 years old. At the age of 18, while I was at the 3rd and last grade of High School, I had a couple of bad experiences that made me feel marginalized and discriminated against in the country that I was expected to be integrated into its culture and society. Now I can tell that, back then these bad experiences along with the feelings of discrimination and marginalization made me adopt increasingly extreme social ideals and aspirations and it became too difficult for me to find any other beliefs reasonable.
Telling your story. What has happened? How has the story started?
When I was at the age of 18 and in the beginning of the school year, about to attend the 3rd and last grade of High School, my father got a new job so we had to move in another region, municipality of Athens. Consequently, I was also enrolled in another school. At my old school, I had never encountered any problem or difficulty, I had never been discriminated and I have the fondest memories. However, the first period in my new school proved to be completely different and difficult. The majority of my classmates were acting indifferent towards me, only talking to me during the lessons and when they were required to do so and never hanging with me during the breaks or after school. I was hanging out only with one guy from the boys in my class and two girls. These three out of my 26 classmates were the only ones who treated me like a friend and not differently from everyone else. They were obviously avoiding me, rarely replying to me when I was speaking or asking something, never choosing me as partner in school assignments, never inviting me in their birthday parties, they were always calling me using my ethnicity (Albanian) and not my name, keep making nasty comments about my ethnicity and that I was not belonging to Greece and I had to go back to my country and so many other things that I would prefer not to mention. This lasted for a long time.
How did you realize what was going on? What kind of signals could you detect? How do you explain radicalization, referring to your experience?
I started feeling discriminated, marginalized, isolated, not fitting in this school and in the Greek society, not belonging anywhere and that no one could understand me. I started having an aggressive behavior and avoiding almost everyone. I started thinking that it would be better to just hang out with people having the same migrant background like me, as they were the only ones who could understand me. Since in my school there weren’t a lot of kids coming from the same country as me, I started searching for communities and groups in order for me to get integrated. I met by chance a group of boys, older than me, who had graduated from high school and had the same origin as me. We were spending lots of time together; I had learned all about their families, their background, their secrets and we had long talks about the racist incidents they had also experienced. At some point, they told me that they will deliver justice and put them in their place, as no one had done this and that I just needed to say the names of the children. Despite the fact that they were planning mean, harmful things like attacking those children, I felt very good because I thought I was having people with common background, feelings and ideas, willing and ready to defend me.
In the meantime, our physical education teacher at school, during one of our gym classes, noticed – as he told me – my skills in football and told me that he found out that I am quite talented and good at playing football, so he proposed to me to join the school football team. I immediately accepted his offer but unfortunately the first day, the day of my introduction to the team, I realized that the team was composed by the majority of my classmates who were treating me badly. I still did not say anything but I also did not want to quit the team as I like very much football and I had always dreamt of belonging to a football team. By the time I entered the team their behavior began to change. They were treating me like a teammate and as a valuable player for the team. One day, I decided to make a conversation with them and clarify everything. They apologized to me for their behavior and bad comments and said that they hadn’t realized how badly they had hurt me.
I was feeling again that I belong somewhere but I couldn’t enjoy that as all I had on my mind was cutting off myself from this bad and dangerous group that I was engaged in my attempt to face discrimination and injustice. When I was bringing to my mind their words, I was feeling scared and that all these were wrong and nobody should got harmed. I sensed that the entire situation was getting out of control.
Have you tried to cope with this situation? What was possible to do? What have you done? Have you involved other people/organizations? Who was involved?
At first, I had the sense that nobody would understand my thoughts and feelings; I was feeling like a stranger so I did not want to discuss this issue with my teachers and the headmaster. I also did not say anything to my family or these 3 classmates with whom I used to hang out with. I was pretending that everything was fine and that I have no problem. But after, as I was too scared to face this group, I started gradually avoiding them in order not to have worrying incidents. At the same time, I also decided to speak to my family, say everything and ask for their advice.
After all this time, I am reconsidering whether I should have spoken with someone a lot earlier, before getting involved into that nasty group and explain the facts and ask for help and advice.
Did you feel you had the skills to manage this kind of situations? Which was the most difficult part of it? Have you had any form of support?
Of course I did not have the skills to manage a situation like that, and I feel grateful for my parents, who supported me more than enough when they found out what was going on. The most difficult part for me was when I realized that someone could have been seriously harmed in such a situation; it was the part that I decided to ask for my parents’ help. One also very difficult moment was when I had to narrate and explain everything to my parents. My introduction to the school’s football team was also a form of support for me, as I reconsidered the facts and I started feeling again included.
End of the story. How did the story end up? What have you learned from this personal experience? What would you say to people who are living similar situations?
I followed my parents’ advice and thankfully I managed to step away from that group of older kids who I strongly believe that are a bad influence. First of all, I learned that when we are not able to cope with a situation, the most right thing to do is to talk and ask for advice. I also learned that violence isn’t the way or the solution to fight against racism, discrimination and injustice. Last but not least, I experienced how sports contribute to inclusion and help people accept diversity and cultivate mutual respect. In my case football had worked as a common factor and united me with my classmates.
Nowadays, I am studying at University and I am still playing football with my fellow-students.
young soccers

face isolation with sport

Pubblicato il da giovanna

details of interview

Role of the Interviewed: amateur football player

Age: 41

Gender: male

Nationality: Greek

Type of radicalization: ethnic discrimination

Historical period collocation: 2016-2018

Date/Country of the Interview: 28/09/2018, Greece

Interviewer: KEAN – Cell of Alternative Youth Activities

KEAN

Have you witnessed or experienced personal situations of radicalization during your activity in sport organizations? What kind of radicalizations have you detected? (Gender, politics, religion, racism, crime, homophobia…)

player

I am 41 years old and I remember myself playing a lot of football from a very young age and since I was 20 years old until today I am playing in amateur teams and sport clubs. During all these years I had experienced different kind of incidents mostly with supporters playing a leading role and mainly when they were becoming passionate during our matches.
I am not totally aware of radicalization, how to identify signs and how to contribute to the prevention of the phenomenon, but during the 2 last years I am witnessing situations which from my personal point of view and experience may be the start of radicalization.
Telling your story. What has happened? How has the story started?
As we all know, during the last years Greece experienced huge refugee flows and a lot of these people were granted international protection and chose to live in Greece. They are trying to learn and get used to our habits, our culture and our daily routine and become part of our society but by also keeping their own culture and practicing their own customs; And this is proper and effective social integration and not forced assimilation.

Hence, they are also participating in sports teams and sport clubs. However, they are facing several discriminatory behaviours and incidents almost on a daily basis. In our team, we also have people coming from Afghanistan and Pakistan who a lot of times have become recipients of verbal aggression and discriminatory behaviours, including comments about their nationality and their religion. Most of the time they are isolated even by teammates

How did you realize what was going on? What kind of signals could you detect? How do you explain radicalization, referring to your experience?
I have noticed that a lot of times, such as for instance during the breaks or after the training sessions or even the matches, they are only hanging with their peers and choose to sit in a different place, more isolated.

I do not know much about radicalisation, thus I cannot precisely explain radicalization but counting on my previous knowledge and experience these incidents could lead to violent behaviours and acts of fanaticism, extremism and terrorism.

Have you tried to cope with this situation? What was possible to do? What have you done? Have you involved other people/organizations? Who was involved?
I approached our coach and talked with him about the situation and the existing conditions and together we were thinking about possible ideas and ways to create a common spirit and unite the whole team.
Did you feel you had the skills to manage this kind of situations? Which was the most difficult part of it? Have you had any form of support?
Unfortunately, neither I nor our coaches have been prepared to face and overcome such cases and the hardest part is to restore the balance and reunite our team as among the values of all sports in general are cooperation, teamwork and team spirit.
End of the story. How did the story end up? What have you learned from this personal experience? What would you say to people who are living similar situations?
Our coach tried to approach individually each player and have a discussion and introduced some brief intercultural activities and games for adults. However, slight progress has been achieved as there are still deep-rooted discriminatory beliefs.
girls playing volley

uneasiness and radicalization

Pubblicato il da giovanna

Role of the Interviewed: coach / amateur sports team / girls volleyball team

Age: 30

Gender: female

Nationality: Greek

Type of radicalization: social / political radicalization

Historical period collocation: 2017

Date/Country of the Interview: 26/09/2018, Greece

Interviewer: KEAN – Cell of Alternative Youth Activities

KEAN

Have you witnessed or experienced personal situations of radicalization during your activity in sport organizations? What kind of radicalizations have you detected? (Gender, politics, religion, racism, crime, homophobia…)

coach

I am a volleyball coach in a local girls’ volleyball team and I have been working as a volleyball coach in amateur sports teams the last 4 years. During these 4 years and depending on my little experience, I have only experienced one incident which I can say that it is pretty much related to radicalization.
Telling your story. What has happened? How has the story started?
The incident happened 1 year ago and concerns one of the girls of the team I was coaching, aged 17 years old and at the last grade of High School. She had been growing up in a single-parent household, raised by her mother since her parents divorced when she was very young and her father was visiting them only once per month. She was quite distant, finding it hard to make friends, she had tensions with her mother and kept saying that she is unfairly treated by everyone and has no future prospects.

She was not accepting any comments, admonitions or advice; on the contrary she was getting angry and aggressive and shouting that I am treating girls unfairly.

Quite frequently she was referring to governments and that they keep lying and cannot do anything to change injustice in the societies.

How did you realize what was going on? What kind of signals could you detect? How do you explain radicalization, referring to your experience?
The rest of her teammates who were quite concerned about her, came at me and freely spoke to me and shared with me the fact that she was asking and searching about teams that act individually in order to defend people’s rights, if such teams exist, where they exist, what they do exactly and how someone can be recruited. In the end they said to me that the more she was reading and searching the more passionate and obsessed she was becoming.

After the confession of the girls, I confirmed my deepest fears.

Have you tried to cope with this situation? What was possible to do? What have you done? Have you involved other people/organizations? Who was involved?
As I felt that I do not have the skill’s capacity to deal with that situation I called her mother and asked from her to meet me in order to discuss a very important issue. Her mother was quite shocked as she had not realized anything about her daughter’s situation due to financial and other personal problems that she was facing. Despite that, she realized how critical the situation was and she asked for my cooperation and support.
Did you feel you had the skills to manage this kind of situations? Which was the most difficult part of it? Have you had any form of support?
I felt and I feel that I lack of the skills and knowledge needed to manage those kind of situations. The most difficult part was when I had to speak with her mother as I did not know what I would be dealing with.
End of the story. How did the story end up? What have you learned from this personal experience? What would you say to people who are living similar situations?
After lots of conversations between the mother and the daughter (something I learned from her mother and not from her) she understood a lot of things that before were unclear and confusing into her mind, she felt much closer to her mother, started focusing on her lessons, graduation and future studies and completely forgot about all of these.

She graduated high school and today she is studying at University in another city, where she also joined an amateur sports team.

soccer

political radicalization behavior

Pubblicato il da giovanna

details of interview

Role of the Interviewed: professional football player

Age: 28

Gender: male

Nationality: Greek

Type of radicalization: political radicalization

Historical period collocation: 2016

Date/Country of the Interview: 20/09/2018, Greece

Interviewer: KEAN – Cell of Alternative Youth Activities

KEAN

Have you witnessed or experienced personal situations of radicalization during your activity in sport organizations? What kind of radicalizations have you detected? (Gender, politics, religion, racism, crime, homophobia…)

player

I am a football player and I am playing in Gamma Ethniki (C National Amateur Division) which is a National Amateur Category – the 3rd highest football league in Greece.

I would like to narrate a story to you that I witnessed about 2 years ago and is related to political radicalization. I have been in quite some teams until today and during this year I moved and joined another team.

Telling your story. What has happened? How has the story started?
My story concerns one of my teammates from the previous team in which I was playing for. We were at the same age and in the beginning we were spending a lot of time together not only during the training sessions but also after them. He always wanted to know and understand everything around him, about society but also humanity and he was searching through web, reading and discussing about social and political issues. At some point, I also realized through our conversations that he was coming from a nationalist family.
Over time, he started to express a lot of enthusiasm about fascist movements and he was saying things like “People are killing the ideal of a free & strong nation”, “Our nation is unique, precious and superior, that is why we should fight for it and protect it”, etc.
Gradually, he started being verbally violent towards others and especially towards people with different national backgrounds and people who were strongly disagreeing with his extreme points of view.
When he understood that I was also not sharing his views he stopped hanging around with me and the following period I noticed that almost none of his old friends was associating with him and only a few of our teammates were hanging out with him. Instead he had found new friends that seemed to have common opinions and perspectives.
How did you realize what was going on? What kind of signals could you detect? How do you explain radicalization, referring to your experience?
At first place, I started realizing what was going on when he stopped searching and reading and started insisting on “Fighting for the protection of our unique nation” and thereafter when he separated himself from everybody else, including teammates, friends and family.
As far as I am concerned, I believe that radicalization occurs when someone expresses and adopts increasingly extreme social, political or religious beliefs and ideals leading to violence, terrorism or extremism.
The truth is that I believe that this story spots early signs of radicalization but I do not consider myself expert in this and I do not know pretty much about the phenomenon of radicalization.
Have you tried to cope with this situation? What was possible to do? What have you done? Have you involved other people/organizations? Who was involved?
The way in which I tried to cope with this situation was by talking to him and trying to shift his mindset but unfortunately he cut me off.
Did you feel you had the skills to manage this kind of situations? Which was the most difficult part of it? Have you had any form of support?
I think that I do not have the skills to handle a situation, a case like this one. The rest of our teammates also tried but with no success.
End of the story. How did the story end up? What have you learned from this personal experience? What would you say to people who are living similar situations?
Unfortunately, I do not know the end of this story or what he is doing today since I have changed team and I had lost contact since then.
young soccers

discrimination towards isolation

Pubblicato il da giovanna

details of the interview

Role of the Interviewed: amateur Football player

Age: 20

Gender: male

Nationality: Greek

Type of radicalization: ethnic discrimination

Historical period collocation: 2013

Date/Country of the Interview: 19/09/2018, Greece

Interviewer: KEAN – Cell of Alternative Youth Activities

KEAN

Have you witnessed or experienced personal situations of radicalization during your activity in sport organizations? What kind of radicalizations have you detected? (Gender, politics, religion, racism, crime, homophobia…)

player

I am coming from the Roma community and I will share with you an incident that I experienced when I was 15 years old. In the beginning I thought that it was just a racist incident but then I realized that things could have gone badly.
Telling your story. What has happened? How has the story started?
Sports are part of every school curriculum in Greece and school students are always playing sports at school. Every week and during gym class I was playing football along with my classmates and since the majority of the boys in my school loved to play football we decided to play also after school hours.
Therefore we gathered and formed 2 amateur teams and we were meeting and playing football at least once every week.

I am coning from a Roma community as well as a couple more boys from my school that also joined the amateur teams which we formed. When we were playing football during the school hours things were going very well and we did not have fights even if there were mistakes, problems or defeats. However, when we were playing after school hours and outside the school yard, our physical appearance and origin seemed to cause problems, as the rest of the children who were not coming from Roma communities were making racist comments, verbal attacks and were often using negative hand gestures during and after our amateur football matches.

Therefore, I was mostly hanging out and had good relationships only with the children coming from Roma communities, since we were experiencing the same kind of discrimination and we were feeling the same towards the rest of the society. Our group was something like our 2nd family!

We were isolated from everyone else and thinking and acting all together and we were relying on each other. In some parts we were also responding both with verbal and physical violence. The more they were behaving badly towards us the more our group was becoming stronger and stronger.

How did you realize what was going on? What kind of signals could you detect? How do you explain radicalization, referring to your experience?
In the beginning we thought that it was just a racist incident but then we realized that things could have gone badly.
Consequently we stopped playing football after school and we were only playing during gym class and school hours, where all tension was transferred and was obvious both to the rest of the school students and the teachers.
I realized that the situation was very serious when we started planning to do bad things to the children that were treating us like that, like stealing or beating them. We were planning to ambush the children and recover justice.
Have you tried to cope with this situation? What was possible to do? What have you done? Have you involved other people/organizations? Who was involved?
The teachers started realizing that there is problem and one of them approached me and we started discussing. The discussions became more often and I started realizing how serious the situation is. In the meantime the teacher had also discussions with all the involved children.
Did you feel you had the skills to manage this kind of situations? Which was the most difficult part of it? Have you had any form of support?
I believe that we would not be able to cope with this situation if we did not have the support and guidance of our teacher, whose advice was significant and useful
End of the story. How did the story end up? What have you learned from this personal experience? What would you say to people who are living similar situations?
The teacher helped a lot in recovering the balance and relationships between us and over time both sides perceived our mistakes.

I would like to say that we should always accept and respect differences and search for the common reference points that will bind us together even with those that are completely different than us.