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La Liga offers refugees & children football lifeline thanks to Bloomsbury collab

01 June 2024 , 07:00
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La Liga has teamed up with the Bloomsbury Foundation to offer refugees and other young children more opportunities in football (Image: LaLiga x Bloomsbury)
La Liga has teamed up with the Bloomsbury Foundation to offer refugees and other young children more opportunities in football (Image: LaLiga x Bloomsbury)

Spain's football superpowers have teamed up with UK charity Bloomsbury to offer children in need hope of a future in football.

Four years after opening its London offices in King's Cross, La Liga is thriving in its partnership with Bloomsbury Football. The collaboration - which first began in 2022 - has brought together two entities focused on giving footballing opportunities to young people who need them most in an effort to tackle issues like antisocial behaviour poor mental health.

Bloomsbury started as a London charity geared towards offering a platform in the sport to underprivileged children between 18 months and 18 years old. That remit has since grown to include refugees and asylum seekers in more recent years, but Bloomsbury founder and CEO Charlie Hyman told how the path to connect with a giant like La Liga grew from such modest beginnings.

"[We] saw a gap in the market for something which was a great experience," Hyman explained to Mirror Sport. "A lot of grassroots sport is run like the internet doesn't exist - down the park, flat footballs etc. [We wanted to] make it an amazing experience so that children are inspired to play football for life. But at the same time make it accessible.

"There's such a lack of open space in London, and it costs thousands of pounds per year for children to play sport. They're often not provided for well at school. It's often [for example] the Year Two teacher who takes all the classes, including sport, and has no experience coaching sports sessions.

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"And if you can't afford the hundreds of pounds fees for kits and boots etc., your child just grows up not doing any physical activity or sport, so no wonder we have lots of issues around antisocial behaviour, mental wellbeing and obesity. So we set out with that vision of something everyone can access where football was the vehicle to give young Londoners the best chance of succeeding. It was me and a bag of footballs in Camden in September 2018, and it's grown quite a bit since then!"

Bloomsbury - which is funded as a charity but charges monthly membership fees, dependent on programme - works with approximately 5,000 children per year, though that number is sure to grow as the charity extends its reach beyond London. The majority of its current subscribers hail from some of the most poverty-stricken boroughs in England's capital, while 55% are from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, while 33% rely on free school meals.

La Liga offers refugees & children football lifeline thanks to Bloomsbury collabKids and teens are given access to better facilities, kit and training if they join the programme (LaLiga x Bloomsbury)

It was announced in April that former Manchester United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward had joined Bloomsbury's board of trustees. "He obviously has an incredible amount of experience in leading an organisation with a brand that inspires millions through football," said Hyman. "If we're to achieve our strategy, we need lots of great brands to support what we're doing. So his expertise there is going to be really invaluable."

La Liga's director of international relations, Keegan Pierce, clarified the division's input and how the charity's practice has changed since the collaboration began. Twelve La Liga clubs have contributed kit and sponsorship for 12 Bloomsbury teams, who have been competing in a 30-week season across two divisions for the past two years.

La Liga offers refugees & children football lifeline thanks to Bloomsbury collabBloomsbury founder Charlie Hyman (second from left) has made swift progress since starting the foundation in 2018 (Bloomsbury Football)

The programme also recently celebrated the inaugural final of its new girls schools' programme, which culminated on May 23. That's in addition to La Liga Camps UK, annual summer events held in southeast England that help to foster further relations between the two parties and their young audience.

"We want to be good neighbours" Pierce highlighted. "We're not even two full seasons into this [partnership], so the pipeline hasn't really had a chance to flourish completely, but I do know this programme has served as a wide end of the funnel to get more and more players into the Bloomsbury ecosystem, who then go on to play for the academy team etc..

La Liga offers refugees & children football lifeline thanks to Bloomsbury collabThe foundation hosts a 12-team La Liga competition, held across two divisions (LaLiga x Bloomsbury)

"So I think one of the most useful things from the collaboration is identifying players who maybe weren't coming through other touch points. But they've now entered into other areas of the Bloomsbury set-up."

The Bloomsbury Football programme acts as a much-needed home away from home for many of its members, offering structure and a stable sporting environment where aspiring sportspeople can fulfil their passion. As Hyman puts it, the foundation gives many kids and young adults something that will "get them out of bed" as they look to mimic their favourite athletes.

La Liga offers refugees & children football lifeline thanks to Bloomsbury collabBloomsbury hosts teams and programmes that coach people up to 18 years of age (LaLiga x Bloomsbury)

Moreover, players have also been given greater opportunities to advance their footballing prospects via the added exposure they've received. And there's no sign of Bloomsbury stopping with La Liga, with potential visions of a charity Champions League, should the likes of Serie A, the Bundesliga or Ligue 1 follow suit.

La Liga offers refugees & children football lifeline thanks to Bloomsbury collabThe partnership with La Liga has been a raging success thus far (LaLiga x Bloomsbury)

"There's a magic spark here that I think we couldn't have even imagined when we first started having conversations months before [the collaboration started]," said Pierce. "To go from year one, where we were herding cats and trying to get as many clubs to donate as possible and understand the vision behind the partnership, and then that really gratifying response in year two.

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"To see every single one of them say, 'We are absolutely on board with this and would not think of not renewing.' That was very exciting. Now it's the clubs who come to us and say, 'Do you have more content? Do you have more information about the impact we're having?'"

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Tom Sunderland

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