More than a dozen kids were kicking soccer balls inside a community space at the Somali Health Board building in Seattle’s Rainier Valley neighborhood on a recent Wednesday morning. They were taking turns trying to dribble and maneuver the ball past one another.
Cheers and exclamations rose when someone succeeded; they were still buzzing with excitement from an announcement Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson made at the center just minutes before.
“I am so proud to announce that our youth access program will give 1,400 tickets to young people and their caregivers from across our region. So that they have the opportunity to attend FIFA World Cup matches right here in Seattle free of charge,” Wilson told a crowd that included kids wearing soccer jerseys sponsored by the Somali Health Board.
World Cup tickets normally go for hundreds to thousands of dollars each. To make some tickets available to children and teenagers, the city is partnering with the local World Cup organizing committee and received support from Seattle sports teams, community organizations, and businesses including Amazon, Boeing and Microsoft. No tax dollars are being spent on this initiative.
Yassir Abdilla, a 17-year-old soccer player, hopes he gets a ticket and can join friends to watch a match, an opportunity he thinks will ignite others’ passion for soccer.
“Who knows? Maybe the kids we bring to the World Cup might be in the next World Cup or in the future,” Abdilla said.
The Somali National Football team has never qualified for the World Cup, but there are players with Somalian heritage who will represent other countries on the global stage this year.
That holds special meaning for Abdirahman Omar, the executive director for African Center for Excellence, an organization that will distribute some of the free tickets. He said kids will be inspired when they see players like them on the pitch.
“This is a global language, soccer and football — as we call it from a Somali perspective — this is a universal value coming together,” Omar said.
Ali Abdulla is a founder of African Youth Sports Academy, another organization tasked with choosing which kids will receive a free ticket. Abdulla said his organization has more than 1,000 kids signed up to play soccer.
“I would love all of them to go and experience, but that's not going to happen,” he said. “But even if we have two kids that goes there, that two kids will have their memories for the rest of their lives.”
For now, Abdulla is working to find a way to distribute the tickets. One idea is to have the kids enter a friendly competition for them, whether that means kicking a soccer ball to hit a target or playing in a soccer tournament.
