The Festival 06 final: MYSA vs KickAIDS
On 8 July 2006 a Nairobi youth project and a Pretoria club met on Mariannenplatz for the Copa Andrés Escobar. It finished 2–2 and went to penalties.
The last match of the streetfootballworld festival 06 was played on Saturday 8 July 2006 on Mariannenplatz in Berlin-Kreuzberg. On one side was the Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA) from Nairobi, Kenya. On the other was KickAIDS – PDP Sports Club from Pretoria, South Africa. After twelve minutes of five-a-side football the score was 2–2. MYSA won the penalty shoot-out 4–3 and took home the Copa Andrés Escobar.
The next evening, in Berlin’s Olympiastadion, Italy and France played the final of the FIFA World Cup. That one also ended level, 1–1 after extra time, and was also decided on penalties, with Italy winning 5–3. Berlin saw two world finals settled from the spot in two days.
How the teams got there
Twenty-two teams from social projects on five continents played in Berlin between 2 and 8 July. Every player was aged between 16 and 21, and every match lasted twelve minutes with five players per side. Two more teams, Play Soccer from Accra and Search and Groom from Lagos, never arrived: German authorities refused their visas.
The surviving records of the tournament are thin. The match-by-match results of the group stage are not preserved in the sources we have been able to check, and neither are the names of the goalscorers in the final. What is documented is the result, the format, and who the two finalists were.
MYSA: the champions
MYSA was not a team put together for a tournament. It was founded in 1987 in Mathare, a group of informal settlements in Nairobi, by Bob Munro, a Canadian who was working as an adviser to the United Nations on environmental policy. The story goes that local children led him to a football pitch covered in rubbish, and that cleaning it was the first thing the organisation ever did.
That beginning shaped everything that followed. In MYSA’s leagues, teams earn points not only for winning matches but for taking part in clean-up projects in their neighbourhoods. Players can have their school fees paid, and the organisation runs programmes on HIV/AIDS, drugs, leadership, music and photography. Girls have played in MYSA leagues since 1992; by 2006, a third of its players were girls.
By the time its team travelled to Berlin, MYSA had already won the UNEP Global 500 Award for environmental work (1999), the CAF African Youth Development Award (2001), a Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands (2003) and a Laureus Sport for Good Award (2004). It also had its own professional club, Mathare United, founded in 1994. The Bangladeshi Daily Star, reporting on the final, described MYSA’s players simply: they “are drawn from shanty towns”.
KickAIDS: the runners-up
KickAIDS – PDP Sports Club came from Pretoria. As its name suggests, the club tied football to the fight against HIV/AIDS. Reaching the final of a world street football festival as a club with that mission was itself a statement: the two best teams in Berlin both came from projects for which football was a tool for something larger than the result.
Why the final mattered
For the organisers, the festival was about more than the trophy. Germany’s Foreign Office described its purpose as setting “a clear sign against violence, xenophobia and racism”, and the trophy itself carried the name of a Colombian defender murdered after an own goal in 1994.
Still, the final gave the week its ending. Two African projects, one from the slums of Nairobi and one from Pretoria, met in the middle of Kreuzberg while the city was full of World Cup visitors. According to the Daily Star, many of the festival’s participants were also invited to attend World Cup matches. For young players from Mathare, Kabul or Bogotá, that summer in Berlin put their own game on the same stage as the professional one, at least for a week.
FAQ
Who won the streetfootballworld festival 06?
Mathare Youth Sports Association from Nairobi, Kenya. They drew 2–2 with KickAIDS from Pretoria, South Africa, in the final on 8 July 2006 and won 4–3 on penalties.
Where was the final played?
On Mariannenplatz in Berlin-Kreuzberg, the venue of the whole festival.
What were the rules?
Teams of five players, matches of twelve minutes, and all players aged between 16 and 21.
Who scored in the final?
The scorers are not recorded in the sources available to us. If you have documentation of the match, we would like to hear from you.
Conclusion
The Festival 06 final is a small entry in the football records: one line on RSSSF and a short agency report. But it brought together two organisations that had spent years using football to change things in their communities, and it ended the first world festival of street football with a penalty shoot-out on a square in Kreuzberg. The full list of teams is in the Festival 06 archive, and the results PDF keeps the record in its original place.