Becoming a Homeless World Cup referee with Adil Leite
|Adil [centre] with Amaniel [left] and Stefan at the Homeless World Cup in Oslo in 2017. Image: Anita Milas
“I thought – referee? No, I hate referees! I don’t understand referees!”
We spoke to Adil Leite about moving to from Ethiopia to Norway, becoming a referee and what it’s like teaching the next generation. Adil will be running a referee course in India with our partner Slum Soccer in April 2023.
You might recognise Adil Leite from years refereeing at the Homeless World Cup, he made his refereeing debut at the Homeless World Cup in Glasgow 2016 and has been centre stage at all the subsequent Homeless World Cups, taking control of the final between Chile and Mexico in Cardiff in 2019.
Adil now runs an annual referee training course in Norway with Frelsesarmeen (Salvation Army) as part of their sports academy. In April 2023 he will fulfil a lifelong dream of travelling to India, where he will train a group of 20-25 referees from India and Bangladesh in collaboration with our Indian partner Slum Soccer.
When you see him in control on the pitch, commanding the space and smiling encouragingly to the players, it’s understandable that you’d assume he’d been doing it all his life.
ADIL’s journey From player to referee
But in 2013, Adil was on the other side, representing Norway as a player at the Homeless World Cup in Poznan. He jokes that when coaches in Norway suggested he refereed at their national tournament, that he didn’t even like referees. So why would he become one? After giving it a try, he changed his mind and hasn’t looked back since.
One of the things that makes Adil such a great referee, especially at the Homeless World Cup is that he understands how the players feel. His journey to the tournament, like all the players at the Homeless World Cup wasn’t simple.
Adil moved to Norway from Ethiopia as a young teenager. He’d been living with his grandmother and brother in a small village and for years they had been sending letters backwards and forwards to his parents who were already living in Norway.
When they arrived, it was going to be a great family reunion and an opportunity for a new life in Europe. However, when he and his brother arrived, it wasn’t what they had in mind.
Adil and his brother were very isolated, having moved to a rural area of Norway with a population of 3,000 people.
Adil explained “It was very difficult to be part of society because I didn’t speak the language. No one spoke to each other, and I was very alone.”
Despite this, Adil was still looking for the positives, but his brother had a different outlook.
“I was happy, I thought it was ok – I’m in a better place. But my brother didn’t feel so good about it.”
|Adil Leite [centre] with the team of referees at the Homeless World Cup in Oslo in 2017. Image: Anita Milas
A difficult realisation
During this period Adil found out that his brother and his parents were not biologically related to him.
“That was a big hit for me. I am just alone. I don’t know where I came from. A lot of things happened in that one year.”
In this time, his grandmother who him and his non-biological brother had lived with in Ethiopia had died, taking any knowledge of the truth with her. He had no one to turn to for answers.
It had been around 18 months since they’d arrived in Norway and Adil was now 15. After finding out his parents were not his biological parents he was taken into care of the state in Norway and moved to larger nearby city Stavanger. He was considered too old for a foster family so went to live in a youth housing centre. Adil explained a lot of the young people had been moved there because they had a track record of bad behaviour or causing trouble.
“I was there because they didn’t have a place for me – a place for good kids.”
He found that the way to fit in was to start getting involved with what the other young people were doing.
“I was running away from my problems. It began with regular smoking; then we would sneak out and smoke other things. It was my first love when I smoked Marijuana for the first time. I was like wow! I need this for my whole life! It was as if everything was floating away. All of my problems were disappearing.”
“After that, it [Marijuana] was not enough, I did a lot of different drugs just trying to get that same feeling. That first feeling never came back. After that I was paranoid, but I kept trying a lot of things.”
Tackling addiction
He wanted his life to change and to stop his addiction, but it wasn’t easy to do alone.
“It’s so difficult to quit without help. I was doing it for a lot of years. I tried but I didn’t make it because I wasn’t doing it for the right reason. I didn’t make it on my own.”
“There was a guy who was working at the Salvation Army, and he knew I was struggling. I remember he said to me, ‘you like football? Do you want to come and play for an hour or something?’”
“I made a lot of excuses why not to go, but he didn’t give up. He just said – give it a go, try it for an hour, for 45 minutes even and you never have to go again if you don’t like it.”
“It was like a flashback to when I was young – the good memories came rushing back. For that one hour I forgot everything because I was running with the ball – I was focusing and everything and it hit me – oh I want to do this more.”
That first training session was a turning point for him.
“I came home, and I was so tired. I remember I didn’t even take a shower; I just fell asleep. Before that I had to take something to sleep. I remember waking up in the morning and thinking, ‘Oh I didn’t take anything.’”
After becoming a regular at training sessions, Adil was offered a once in a lifetime chance.
Representing Norway at the Homeless World Cup
“A lot of people talked about the Homeless World Cup as if it was a miracle or a salvation or something and I wanted to experience that.”
To join the team, Adil had to sign a contract committing to staying off drugs and alcohol. This was difficult, but he managed to stick to it and travelled with the team to Poland.
|Adil Leite represented Norway at the Homeless World Cup in Poznan in 2013.
“When I was in Poznan, I understood what they were talking about. It wasn’t just the football; it was like a family. They [the Salvation Army] give you everything from day 1 to the Homeless World Cup.”
On returning from the Homeless World Cup, the Salvation Army have a map where players go onto the field as players and leave as something else – whether that be a coach, a referee, working in media etc.
Initially Adil tried coaching, but he explains at the time he was shy and didn’t feel comfortable. A few years later, the team at the Salvation Army approached him with a new suggestion.
Becoming a referee
“We had a national tournament in Stavanger, and they said, ‘now you’ve been playing a lot of years – what do you think Adil? I thought – referee? No, I hate referees! I don’t understand referees!”
They persuaded him to give it a go, saying he felt like that because he didn’t know what it felt like to be a referee. He gave it a chance and took part in a referee training programme run by Homeless World Cup head referees Paul Nagtegaal and Iain McGill.
After he’d refereed at the national tournament and completed the training, they chose him to referee at the Homeless World Cup in Glasgow.
|Adil Leite now runs an annual referee training course with the Frelsesarmeen. Image: Lars Kristian Singelstad/Frelsesarmeen
“I remember I was refereeing Mexico against Scotland and Scottish people love football so when Scotland played it was like a final. I remember I did something wrong, and I thought I just want to go home.
It hadn’t even been one minute, and I remember one of the referees came to me and could see that I had frozen, and he said to me, ‘You’re going to make it Adil – just focus on one minute at a time.’ After that I took it minute by minute and it was a fantastic feeling.”
After playing street football for nearly five years, Adil has found his love of street football has been reinforced in his new role as a referee at the centre of the court. He now has one aim, to give something back and “to give people hope”.
“Everything around street soccer and the Homeless World Cup is to give people hope. Everyone understands you, people don’t judge you because of your mistakes before, they look after you.”
“The Homeless World Cup and the Salvation Army give you a taste of how life can be and when you taste it you want to have more. This is what people forget, they think it’s all about football – but it’s about that little bit of hope.”
This month, Adil will share his love of refereeing with a new cohort of referees in India and with his inspiring words and experience, the new referees won’t only leave the course with a shiny new whistle after taking a step on a new career path, but a feeling of hope for their futures too.
Find out more about Frelsesarmeen and their programme in Norway supporting people who are experiencing homelessness.
Words: Rebecca Corbett
Images: Anita Milas and Lars Kristian Singelstad / Frelsesarmeen