'A life changing moment': Inside England's Homeless World Cup training session ahead of the tournament of a lifetime

Frankie isn’t the name he was born with. But growing up, he dreamed of Frank Lampard. Idolised him. So it’s the name he chose. 

When he arrived in the UK, seeking safety after fleeing his home in Sudan, he didn’t know what life would hold. “I came as a survivor, surviving torture, killing and murder,” Frankie says. Now Frankie Jumes is head coach for the next English football team to head out on to the world stage seeking glory.

This week, England’s team heads to the Homeless World Cup in Oslo, hoping to go one better than 2024 and bring the trophy home. But the team stands for something far more.

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“I’m so proud to be English,” Lionesses penalty hero Chloe Kelly exclaimed after her winning spot kick. In the face of discrimination and endless “why don’t they make the goals smaller” chat, the women’s side had gone out and given an emphatic answer to the question: what does it mean to represent your country?

You get one shot at the Homeless World Cup as a player. Those in the team must either have been homeless in the last year, work as a street paper vendor, or current or former asylum seekers. This year will mark the tournament’s 20th edition. It builds on a growing history which includes actor Michael Sheen selling his homes to finance an imperilled year in Cardiff and Netflix releasing The Beautiful Game, bringing the human drama to streaming viewers across the world. At the team’s unveiling in East London earlier this summer, on football pitches set under a railway track, Big Issue was there to watch them play and learn their stories.

The road to get here is winding. Piri was homeless after losing a job, slept in night shelters and started playing football with New Horizons, a youth homelessness organisation in North London. They put him onto this.

Football was a constant while he was homeless. “Football keeps me motivated, makes me happy and confident. I always try to find a session here or there to play,” he says.

“It’s a very special role to represent something very big, to represent the country. You really have to feel proud to do it. I just feel happy to do it, to give my best, to contribute as much as I can to help the team.”

Nineteen-year-old Prince, head fully in the game, wants to use the tournament as a springboard to a professional career. He plays as much as he can, in any format he can find.

He wouldn’t be the first to make that daring run from the tournament to the big time. Championship club Queen’s Park Rangers have just signed Richard Kone, after a season which saw him bag 21 goals in League One. Kone got his start playing for Ivory Coast in the 2019 Homeless World Cup.

The football on offer at the Homeless World Cup is streets away from the fare on offer with 11 players. Teams of four – three outfielders and a goalkeeper in an area nobody else can enter – battle it out over two seven-minute halves.

I watch the team playing a practice match. The game moves back and forth across the pitch, coaches telling players to keep moving. A defence settles, the two men back holding hands as they try to stop the players in red shirts finding an opening. A loose touch gives the white bibs the ball, and with a ball roll and a couple of quick flicks they’re through, blasting the ball at the keeper. It’ll continue in this manner for 15 exhausting minutes in Oslo.

“You’re not stopping, even when you score,” says Prince. “You can’t stop. Your stamina level is going to be tested, your endurance level, your patience, your first touch, your decisiveness.”

“We’ll show them a different side of England. The good side.”

Manager Craig McManus finds himself in a weird position – a Scotsman working tirelessly to ensure English sporting success. While homeless in his younger years, street soccer and the chance to play in the Homeless World Cup gave him something to work towards, kept him sane.

McManus played in the tournament himself, an opportunity to reconnect with his home city Glasgow. “I ran away from the city, and I came back in a different place and a different person,” he says. “It was just a really life-changing moment for me.”

It’s that experience McManus is passing on to the team. The resilience for enduring homelessness can be an asset to players, but it is not such a simple narrative – part of his job is to make sure the pressure and bright lights of the tournament don’t act as a trigger. “The tournament lasts 10 days, but this will be the platform for the rest of their lives,” he says.

Frankie is hoping the team can pick up the baton from the Lionesses. “They can inspire us as team England for the Homeless World Cup, but also the lions for the world cup next year,” he says. “The team is very diverse, from different ethnicities, different colour skin. The message you need to tell is this is how we want England. We need to get away from racism, discrimination and all of these things.”

And, perhaps one day, the journey will see Frankie cross paths with Lampard.

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