São Paulo – Five Syrian refugees living in Jordan will arrive in Brazil this Tuesday (28) to practice and play in Perólas Negras, soccer team and school in the city of Paty do Alferes, Rio de Janeiro. The team was created by NGO Viva Rio. “We’re a feeder team, we educate, we try to place them in the market through soccer, in the sport field or not,” said the marketing director of Viva Rio, Ronaldo Lapa.
The group of Syrians includes four young players – Qais, Hadith, Ahmad and Omar – and the coach Jawdat. They will spend a year in the squad, training with the Pérolas Negras. “We went to Jordan and selected them at the Zaatari refugee camp, we spent 12 days over there,” said Lapa.
The executive describes Pérolas Negras as a “world team of refugees.” In the team, there are players from Haiti, Venezuela and, now, Syria. The soccer club, however, is registered at the federation and compete in regular tournaments. According to Lapa, the team already competed twice in Copa São Paulo de Futebol Júnior and won the championship of the C level (third level) of Campeonato Carioca (Rio de Janeiro state competition).
“Our goal is to project a positive image, not a negative one, not only of the Arabs in the West and here in Brazil, but of the refugees in general,” said the executive.
According to Brazil’s ambassador in Amman, Jordan, Francisco Luz, the Asian Football Development Project (AFDP), organization chaired by Jordanian price Ali Bin Hussein, and the Jordan Football Association held a first player draft, selecting 150 among over 1,000 young Syrian refugees in the country. Later, the staff of Viva Rio visited Jordan and chose the five people to come to Brazil.
The diplomat added that AFDP sponsors a soccer field in the Zaatari camp, in a partnership with UEFA. The embassy lent support to the Brazilian NGO’s mission, made contact with local partners, such as prince Ali and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and worked in the process to obtain visas for the young players and the coach.
The Brazilian embassy in Amman held a ceremony to hand the visas to the young players and it was covered by the local press. The Jordanian newspaper Jordan Times, written in English, for instance, had a full coverage of the event last Monday (20). Joining the Syrian players and coach and the ambassador, also attended the ceremony the project’s manager, Hashem Sabbagh, UNHCR representative in Jordan, Stefano Severe, and prince Ali’s assistant, Paul Hijazin.
Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
