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February 4, 2022
Steve Fleming, co-founder of 2019 Beyond Sport Global Award winner Kick4Life F.C, has recently released Radical Football: Jürgen Griesbeck and the Story of Football for Good, a book that puts forward a vision of transforming the football ecosystem and advances the collective story of Football for Good.
His book shares how Jürgen Griesbeck, CEO of streetfootballworld and co-founder of Common Goal, created a project using football to build peace in Medellín, Colombia following the murder of Colombian footballer Andrés Escobar in 1994. The city was the world’s most violent at the time. It also recounts how Jürgen and Juan Mata, a Spanish football player with the Premier League’s Manchester United, set up the 1% pledge-based movement, Common Goal.
Playing off of the tactical system of ‘Total Football’ epitomized by the Dutch teams of the 1970s, the title represents an idea. It promotes a collaborative off-pitch approach to get people involved in new and exciting ways to maximize the positive impact of the game. Fleming shared that as the book developed, his goal for it expanded further.
“My initial aim was to tell a great story and to introduce Jurgen’s amazing journey to a wider audience…but as we progressed, more layers were added and it became part of a wider story and a wider vision. We saw that this message would be much more relevant if it came, not just from us, but from a diverse team of contributors, and that’s where the idea of the Radical XI came from…I believe there is a lot of learning to be taken from the book around themes such as entrepreneurship and leadership – not just from the successes but also the challenges and failures that are part of any story.”
The Radical XI is a diverse group of elite players, administrators, club owners, activists, entrepreneurs and economists, who all have different ideas and perspectives, but share a belief in a purpose-driven game and industry. Each of the 11 contributed a chapter, including:
- Katja Kraus, a German former football player and official, and the first German woman to be a board member of the Bundesliga club, Hamburger SV, tells her vision for purpose-driven football
- Dale Vince, eco-entrepreneur and owner of Forest Green Rovers, the world’s greenest football club, contributed a piece on how to ‘green up’ football.
- Khalida Popal, founder of the Afghanistan women’s football team speaks to the need for the game to truly represent and protect the world’s most marginalized people.
- Pippa Grange, a sports psychologist who has worked with elite sport globally on performance on and off the field and on winning without compromising culture provided a piece considering what football can learn from 3.8 billion years of nature.
- Pamela Coke-Hamilton, Executive Director of the International Trade Centre, has written a piece on restructuring and rebalancing the football industry to support developing nations and transition economies.
- Moya Dodd, one of the first women on the board of FIFA after 108 years of male-only rule, speaks on putting social impact at the heart of football governance.
- Serge Gnabry, a football player for Bayern Munich FC, has written a piece on how players can embed purpose in their careers.
- Tom Vernon, the English founder of top African football academy Right to Dream, presents a vision for overturning the colonial legacy of football, starting with the World Cup.
- Eniola Aluko, former player and now sporting director at purpose-driven Angel City FC, speaks on promoting racial justice and gender equality.
- Preeti Shetty, CEO of Upshot and Non-Executive Director at Brentford Football Club, provides insight on how purpose can be genuinely embedded in a football club’s DNA.
- Jonas Baer-Hoffmann, General Secretary of FIFPRO, presents a vision for a new democracy in football that puts our human needs first “to learn and flourish, to compete and win, but also to be a part of something bigger, a collective.”
Fleming also sees his book as an opportunity to further a collective mission at a critical time, with so many challenges facing our world: “Collectively the Radical XI has put forward an incredible vision of what might be possible if we all pull together – not to take something away from football, but to make it better, to make it more than an entertainment industry and to make it something that is true to its radical roots as a force for good.”
“There is growing disillusion with the football industry and increasing appetite and urgency for purpose and collective action across society. Football, and sport in general, unifies people like nothing else and I believe we are only scratching the surface of what’s possible…With so much potential to have a positive impact on people and the planet, it is an opportunity lost for all of us if football does not have a greater purpose. I hope the book will encourage those already working in the field and inspire others to take action and join the team.”
Kick4Life is a multiple award-winning charity, social enterprise and football club based in Lesotho, Southern Africa, which delivers a range of sports-based programs around health, education, gender, life-skills development, employability and climate action. The organization’s hospitality enterprises reinvest all profits into Kick4Life’s programs as well as providing training and employment opportunities for hundreds of young people. In 2020, Kick4Life became the first top flight football club in the world to commit to gender-equal pay and budgets, with the women’s team becoming national champions of Lesotho in 2021. Through Kick4Life Assist, the organization also provides a range of training, development and support services that promote sport for social change around the world.
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