Austrian aid in Mexico: Where football is more than a sport

The streets of the big city will be filled again and the green jersey will be omnipresent.

Football in Mexico, a national passion

“Football unites the whole country,” says Leopoldine Ganser in conversation with the KURIER before the Mexicans’ fourth game. The former AHS teacher is currently touring the country with a student choir from Austria and is happy about the impact of football and the World Cup: “Football is more than a sport in Mexico, it is a national passion. Schools are closed during national team games. Cinemas are rented where students can watch the games together.”

The enthusiasm is also evident in the official fan zones. “The population gathers in public places like this Plinth in Mexico City.” One of the large public viewings is taking place on the main square of the 22 million metropolis. “Thanks to football, the whole of Mexico currently seems like one big family. The love for football has no limits,” says Ganser.

The beginnings

Their history has been closely linked to football for decades. It began in her home in Seefeld-Großkadolz in the Hollabrunn district. “There was a soccer field there. There was nothing else you could do,” she remembers.

From 1996 she worked with the Lower Austrian priest Martin Römer in a kindergarten in the poor district on the former garbage dump Chimalhuacan at the gates of the city. The suburb has two million residents who previously lived primarily in corrugated iron shacks. The idea was to get children and young people off the streets through football. “We are there to show alternatives.”

With personal contributions and donations from private and public sources, a football field was built, a bakery, a sewing shop, a medical center, school classes for illiterate children and a multi-purpose hall were built. The project has been supported for many years by the Austrian aid organization Jugend Eine Welt.

The huts became stone houses

Originally called the “Garbage Children Project” because most of the children’s parents worked at the landfill, the name was later changed to “Chimalhuacán Youth and Social Center.” The tin shacks became a respectable suburb of stone houses – financed primarily by remittances from family members working in the USA.

Die „Poldi-League“

The soccer project has now become its own league with more than 300 enthusiastic girls and boys. Support always comes from Austria, for example a team can play in jerseys from Austria’s champions and cup winners LASK. During the conversation, Leopoldine Ganser cautiously omits the fact that the championship is called the “Poldi League” and that a former player from Chimalhuacán won the Homeless World Cup in Amsterdam with her team.

The goal

For Leopoldine Ganser, her sporting successes are of secondary importance. It’s about more. “Football is the only sport you can play in poor neighborhoods. It also has a unifying effect on families who have moved from all over the country to the big city.”

When she sees the joy children have on the pitch or the enthusiasm the national team inspires, Leopoldine Ganser asks herself a question: “Why do you send young men to war and not let them play football?”