Spirit of Football e.V.

„Wo spielst du?“ is the name of one of Spirit of Football’s most beloved psycho-social methods, perhaps because it helps build a bridge between football and many different daily situations. But above all, it helps to build a bridge among people. And how does that work? Well, it depends on the way our participants go along with it… After a very deep and satisfying exchange with the participants of Karak, we drove to the northern city of Mafraq, where the DRC has another centre for psycho-social support. As we were setting up everything for our introduction and the participants started arriving, our first ice breaker was the world’s hardest chocolate bar, which I got from one of the participants and unsuccessfully bit, before noticing people’s laughter, because it was actually a disguised plastic pen! In „Where do you play?“ („Wo spielst du?“ in German), we introduce the personal traits, that involve the different positions on the football field, and try to generate identification among the participants. For instance, a „Midfielder“ would be someone who connects people, who brings them together and has a gift for communication. „Fans“ would be those who rather tend to support and create an atmosphere, for example by making others bite a plastic chocolate bar…

After a lot of fun and action through different games and FairPlay-Football, the time came to „build the bridge“ between football and our daily life. Once we introduced the different positions and the „field“ (in this case, their daily work as team DRC), the participants wrote down their names on the field on the flipchart. It is always very challenging to reflect about ourselves, and the role we adopt in different constellations in life. Maybe at home I am a „defender“ who is not in the spotlight all the time but has a lot of energy and is willing to help others. And perhaps at work, I feel like a “referee”, who has to enforce rules and constantly makes hard decisions, putting others under pressure. At any rate, it was interesting to see how our group got deeply involved in this process. Smiles and jokes did not prevent us from questioning our perception of our own work and our influence on our own team. And by the end of the „first half“ we had a colourful pitch, full of outgoing strikers, courageous goalkeepers, and so on… Just as colourful as our world is. #diversity

Where do you play? Why do you play there? Where would you like to play? A lot of questions make us consider our possibilities and wishes as a key step towards finding ourselves and our role in our team. Just as important is how each of us is perceived by our fellow team members. Our Mafraq DRC crew reacted immediately to the resulting line-up on the flipchart/pitch and a very intense but harmonious discussion took place. Some participants heard for the first time from their own colleagues, that their tasks were essential to the rest, something they had never imagined! In other cases, some types of leadership were questioned by those who apparently needed more empathy and appreciation for their work. Our participants definitively needed the opportunity to contrast the perception and expectations of the whole team, to try to find out the root of some tensions, and to boost the importance of each team member, whose various skills needed to be encouraged and discovered to be enriching for the team. After all, everything works better when you believe in yourself and in your colleagues. #respect

In the end, although this method was very useful to discover some hidden issues among our participants, above all it proved to be crucial to detect many opportunities of personal and group growth, focusing on each one’s positive features. After reorganizing the team on the flipchart, our participants were ready to deal with their everyday life in a new way, and that led us to our next method, FairPlay-Theater, where they could discuss and perform daily situations, which they either needed to change or to value and keep going. And that is how “Wo spielst du?” works as a bridge between football and everyday life, but most important, among people. #teamwork

So, once again, getting to know ourselves and each other, feeling the positive energy from our team fellows and seeing ourselves as an important part of our community proved to be the way to grow as a person and as a team. Because, as you already know, One Ball, One World.

Die Projektreihe ‚Training of Trainers‘ iN JORDANIEN wird gefördert von

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