Fulfilling my childhood dream at forty
“In the whole country we have a big housing problem, I think on average you have to wait ten years for a [social] house, but on the other hand there are a lot of care institutions. In theory homelessness shouldn’t exist in the Netherlands but obviously it does.”
|Jasper Lamboo was the flag bearer and captain of the Dutch team at the Homeless World Cup in Amsterdam in 2015. Image: Anita Milas
Philosopher and Dutch player turned coach Jasper Lamboo is at the heart of Life Goals programmes supporting people to overcome addiction.
Everyone’s life is punctuated with key moments, some good, some bad. For Jasper Lamboo, being scouted by a local professional football club as a teenager was one of the good ones. He dreamt of being goalkeeper for the Dutch national team. But that dream wouldn’t become a reality until he was forty. What happened in between was defined by other moments which set him on a different path.
His parents separating when he was 14 was one of the bad ones. Their separation prompted a long and disruptive period of his life.
“I started to rebel; I quit school, I quit playing football and I started hanging around in the street doing nothing but giving other people trouble.
“My mother had already lost her husband and my brother was 18 months older than me and my mother couldn’t really handle that. She sent us to a home outside home – an institution. When I was there, I started to become really aggressive.”
While he was living in care, Jasper was paired with a mentor, who was a kick-boxing coach. It gave him a new focus: “I felt better, I was more at ease, I was really passionate about kickboxing.”
However, six months after he’d left the institution and moved home a tragic moment changed Jasper’s life forever. His brother died in an accident.
“He climbed up on a bridge and he fell down 12 metres and broke his neck. He was like my twin brother because we went through that all together. We were really, really close.”
Reflecting, Jasper sees losing his brother as a “breaking point”.
Before he died, Jasper started to get involved in the underground party scene, going to squats where drugs were readily available.
Jasper's struggle with addiction and homelessness
“There were people using heroin and I thought, ‘I am 18, I have had my chances, I didn’t take them. Life is not for me. I don’t want to live anymore. I had all those emotions, and I couldn’t handle it anymore.”
Where he’d previously said no to drugs, now he wanted to escape, and drugs seemed to be the solution.
“For me at first it felt like it was a good idea – all these emotions I couldn’t handle, they were disappearing like snow on a hot roof.”
As his addiction spiralled, his job as a scaffolder and his relationship with his girlfriend at the time started to slip away. As Jasper explained, “all those balls were in the air.”
After quitting his job and leaving his girlfriend, Jasper ended up being homeless, and living on the streets. He was 18 and it was 1993. It would take a long time for him to have some stability again.
“I was really addicted. In 2007 I lived in a Salvation Army hostel. I lived there for a year and a half. In 2010, I had been addicted for 17 years and I was 35 and hit rock bottom. I was having suicidal thoughts. It was getting worse and worse. In 2010, I kicked my addiction.
“There was a whole new world opening up for me, but what was I going to do with my new life? That was really difficult. I didn’t even know what I liked anymore because I had drifted so far away from myself. I didn’t have a clue what to do with all the precious time I had gained.”
“Sport gave me my life back”
He was still in touch with someone from the Salvation Army, who he now describes as his friend. He said, “Jasper, you used to like sports, didn’t you?”
|Jasper (second from the left, back row) and the dutch team with Willem-Alexander, King of the Netherlands. Image: Jasper Lamboo
Prompted by their conversation, he joined the Salvation Army’s sports programme that they run with the Life Goals Foundation.
“I started to do sport again, I started to be a goalkeeper again. I really had a goal in life, both literally and figuratively.”
“It gave me so much back and I really enjoyed it and when I was 40, I participated in the Homeless World Cup in Amsterdam. I was the captain and the goalkeeper of the national Dutch team. When the national anthem played, it really felt like my youth dream was there. It was amazing. Sport gave me my life back.”
After the Homeless World Cup in Amsterdam, Jasper decided it was his turn to give something back.
“I tried to help others how I was helped myself. I started to become a coach, and this is what I still do today [in 2022].”
He’s now working for Life Goals and regularly does talks for the Salvation Army telling people about the power of sport to help recovery. However, it can be challenging.
“Sometimes I work in the institutions where I was myself. I was delivering an education programme, being a mental health support worker. When I was there, I was coming across people who I used to have as friends when I was addicted. They see me and they ask, ‘Oh you’re living here now, can I borrow €5 from you?’. I have to explain I’m working here, and we don’t ask for money.”
“You have to support each other”
|Jasper hugs a Northern Irish player at the Homeless World Cup in Amsterdam in 2015. Image: Anita Milas
Jasper explains remaining professional and not expecting instant results is key to supporting people.
“The closeness and distance can be a challenge – you don’t want to be too close to someone, you have to have some professional distance. That can be a challenge. But I feel really rich to be part of someone’s recovery process. It’s not that you get much back, not every participant is kind to you – sometimes they don’t have the best days. You might not get it back straight away, but in the end it’s really rewarding.”
Football is now a daily feature in Jasper’s life. Each day he helps to run sessions with Life Goals.
“The football sessions are really crowded; we can get between 25-40 people.”
Describing it as a “really nice” group, one of Jasper’s biggest achievement is that now after several years he doesn’t have to intervene, as the group polices itself.
“Some new participants will have aggression, or maybe have behavioural problems, but the group will correct this. They’ll say, ‘Hey! We don’t do that here. We’re here to give each other positive vibes, we’re not going to taunt each other, we’re not going to be aggressive.’
“If you taunt your teammates, you’re putting them down, you’re not going to play any better, and neither am I if I’m negative on the pitch. When I was a young guy and I was playing in a professional club, you have to support each other. That was something I learnt from a young age; we are a team.
“We rise by lifting others, we don’t rise by putting each other down. I think it’s like sending positive vibes, it can spread.
Sport helpS PEOPLE TO escape daily struggles
|Jasper and the players celebrate being awarded a grant for the S.v.e.T. programme, a Life Goals sub programme.
“Forget about all the things around you and do some sport. If somebody has something on their mind, we can talk about it, but the main thing is to do sport and forget about it.”
As well as sport being able to create a sense of community and belonging, it can also help people to learn key life skills.
“Sport teaches you to work together and develops social skills; how do you get on with others. We went to Scotland on two days’ notice. Most of the guys are not used to being around other people, family even, for more than 1-2 days and now we’re together for a week.
“Being in a team helps to promote self-esteem - that feeling that ‘I am part of the team, and everyone is of equal value.’”
Football itself can teach key lessons, such as interacting with authority, being gracious when you win and accepting defeat.
“I think you can use it in daily life. How do you cope with a referee who you think is against you? How do you cope with success? How do you cope with losing? In normal life you don’t always get what you want. I think there’s even a song about it!”
Expression through sport
“Sport is also a way to express yourself. There are so many things in sport you can learn about yourself and learn about life.”
Jasper has learnt many lessons himself through sport and overcoming addiction.
“When I was addicted, I didn’t have anything. When I kicked my addiction, I really learned that a human being doesn’t need all that much. In a capitalist environment we need, more, more, more. But that’s not what life is about, some material and convenience are good – you have to have a roof over your head, you need to have some food, but you don’t need it all.
“Being is really enough. People are only having, having. That’s really a lesson I learnt in life. I had to have my drugs and when that fell away, I was still alive, I felt very rich inside. I am not a rich guy, but I feel rich because of the things I have inside. I think a lot of people lose that insight.
“You don’t need to have a big car; it’s about playing football and having fun together – that’s what makes you rich.”
Find out more about our Dutch Partner, Life Goals and how they’re using sport to help people to reintegrate into society and turn their lives around.
Words: Rebecca Corbett
Images: Anita Milas and Jasper Lamboo