“Football can repair my life”
|Boris played for Bulgaria for the first time at the Wroclaw Cup. Image: HWC/Rebecca Corbett
“When I am on the pitch, I feel like there is electricity in my skin”
Boris represented Bulgaria for the first time at the Wroclaw Cup in Poland. The Wroclaw Cup is an annual street football tournament held by our Polish partner Stowarzyszenie Reprezentacja Polski Bezdomnych (Polish Homeless National Street Soccer Team Association).
Boris Ivankov Mitkov grew up in a village in rural Bulgaria with his mother and his two brothers. Bulgarian Turks, they spoke Turkish at home, rather than Bulgarian. (An estimated 8% of people in Bulgaria speak Turkish and are ethnically Turks).
When Boris turned five, life dramatically changed. He was moved by social workers into a children’s home, and shortly after his mother left the country.
Viktor Kirkov, the manager of Sports Management Bulgaria, explains: “In the West, you might call it [the children’s home] an orphanage, and the children - orphans – but 90% of these boys and girls in Bulgaria they are left by their families or social workers took them away because of poor living conditions.”
It was a scary time for Boris, when he arrived at the children’s home, everyone spoke Bulgarian. In the move he’d also been separated from his brothers. In 2022, he is sixteen and doesn’t know where they are, he explains, “I don’t know them anymore”.
“At the beginning I didn’t know what to do”
Remembering that time, he also recalls seeing the boys at the children’s home playing football. Before moving to the children’s home, he’d never seen people play football before.
“At the beginning I didn’t know what to do, but I watched the others – the boys would play day after day, so I started to copy what they were doing – step by step”, Boris remembers.
When he was 11, he started to take drugs – he started by smoking marijuana and then moved onto methamphetamines. Boris needed money and he started to commit crime – stealing something here, taking money from a vending machine there.
Two months before he turned 15, Boris went to the institution for criminals – a youth offending centre for people who have committed minor crimes.
Finding himself closed in a room for 4-5 hours a day, he started to notice other boys playing football.
“I saw it as a connection with freedom – not to leave the institution – but for freedom in my daily life.”
As he started to play, his natural talent and ability was noticed by the sports teacher at the centre.
“He told me I have good skills and I can join the ‘Team of Hope’ and become a national player, but I had to be serious.”
|“When I am on the pitch, I know that many people are watching and that I am representing Bulgaria. All these cameras are watching. I feel like there is electricity in my skin.” Image: HWC/Rebecca Corbett
Boris recognised the opportunity and worked hard to be selected for the team. His first opportunity to represent the team came when the Wroclaw Cup was announced it was going ahead.
“I didn’t expect to be here. When I am on the pitch, I know that many people are watching and that I am representing Bulgaria. All these cameras are watching. I feel like there is electricity in my skin.”
“I will do everything I can to be a good player, maybe not the best in the world – but a good player and I will tell everyone my story – just to tell everybody that anyone can change their life. To start from zero – minus even – and to build a good life.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t play football. Football is the main part of my life.
“If somebody has the same life as my life in the past, my advice is to stop committing crimes, to make new goals, have a new focus and try to achieve these goals.
“Football is a nice sport. Football can repair my life.”
Sports Management Bulgaria are our partner in Bulgaria, find out how they’re using football to end homelessness and tackle social isolation.
Words: Rebecca Corbett