Perhaps football's ability to bridge divides has nowhere been as evident as it was during the Christmas holiday of 1914, when German, French, British and Belgian soldiers met in the middle of No Man's Land in Flanders, Belgian and called a truce.
In the midst of the interminable fighting on the Western Front, these men came together and played....football. The soldiers used their helmets as goalposts, playing footie and chatting with one another. And while a competitive sporting spirit existed in these matches (the 133rd Saxon Regiment recorded their 3-2 win against a British team in their official history), footie still provided hope and the means for mutual understanding. In the spirit of the prevailing goodwill of the moment, the soldiers went about burying the remaining dead, exchanging rations and gifts, and shaking hands. It was a rare affirmation of humanity in the despair of a never ending war.
Poignantly, in Silent Night: The World War I Christmas Truce by Stanley Weintraub, a soldier at the scene recalled how "No Man's Land seemed 10 miles across when we were crawling out on night patrol; but now we found it no wider than the width of two football pitches." That is football's power: to take a seemingly insurmountable distance and shrink it to something manageable; to bring people together, where race, religion and war may have divided them theretofore; to give hope to the underpriviliged and to empower the underserved. These are the ways that football will save the world, and this blog is dedicated to highlighting groups that help to actualize the beautiful game's potential.
