Magic Mexico’s winning formula
|Mexico Men's team have won the Homeless World Cup four times - Cardiff 2019, Mexico 2018, Glasgow 2016 and Amsterdam 2015. Image: Romain Kedochim
By Fiona Crawford
When you see the rankings and which teams have consistently taken home the Homeless World Cup trophies in recent years, it’s likely you’ll imagine teams with elite training programmes and a win-at-all-costs mentality. That might also be the impression you’d glean witnessing the disciplined warm-up and playing style with which regular reigning Homeless World Cup champions Mexico operate.
You’d be surprised, then, to learn that the eight times the Mexican Women and the four times the Mexican Men have won the tournament are not something programme founder and coach Daniel Copto thinks a lot about at all. If anything, mention of the Mexican teams’ success makes the unassuming man who quietly guides the players through the tournament a little uncomfortable because such success is incidental to his wider efforts and goals.
"When I encountered this programme, I was amazed" [Daniel third from left] with the Mexican and Romanian teams at the Sacramento 2023 Homeless World Cup Image: Donnie Nicholson
A dual Mexican–Canadian citizen, Copto is a psychologist and addictions counsellor. He first discovered the Homeless World Cup and its life-altering outcomes through his work in a recovery centre in his second home country, Canada. Copto’s first foray into the tournament was to take the Canadian team to the Edinburgh iteration. That was 2005—the tournament’s third annual event; in 2024 it’s the 19th edition of the Homeless World Cup and 21 years since the first tournament took place in 2003. This makes Copto one of the Homeless World Cup’s original and longest-serving coaches.
Copto has a background in life-changing interventions but there was something about the Homeless World Cup that he found especially profound. It was not just life-altering for players but for him too. “When I [encountered] this programme, I was amazed,” he explains. He couldn’t stop thinking about it, and about how its aspects would be applicable in his birth country, Mexico.
|Mexico won the Sacramento 2023 Women's Homeless World Cup. They have now won the trophy eight times. Image: Anita Milas
“I was meant to live in Canada for the rest of my life. I had a nice life, nice house … Everything that anybody worked for, I had it,” he explains. “But something inside me just start pushing me to go back to Mexico. Because, obviously, the social problems in Mexico are huge.”
Copto sounded out whether there would be interest in him starting a Mexican street soccer programme that aligned with the Homeless World Cup. The answer he received was yes. That answer saw Copto and his family relocate to Mexico to start from scratch in late 2006. It wasn’t a smooth process, both because Copto’s family weren’t keen on the move and because building such a programme from the ground up was incredibly difficult work.
“I was a romantic, thinking that it was going be so easy,” he says, shaking his head. “It wasn’t easy at all.” With scant sponsorship interest as he sought to establish the programme and demonstrate its value, Copto funded the team with his own savings for the first two years.
“I was a romantic, thinking that it was going be so easy, it wasn’t easy at all.”
The breakthrough finally came in 2009. After having door-knocked countless corporates to little effect, Copto garnered interest from Fundacion Telmex through an introduction from a friend. The foundation is the charitable arm of Mexican telco Telmex, owned by Mexican billionaire and Mexico’s wealthiest citizen Carlos Slim.
Intrigued by the concept, Fundacion Telmex conducted due diligence and initially funded the pilot programme. “They interviewed me, they went to [observe] a programme. They wanted to see what it was about, what we were doing. Then, they decided to jump in.. But the first year, they wanted to taste it, so they ran a pilot with us,” Copto explains.
Image: Anita Milas
Still, it was a start. With the foundation’s support, Copto and his team operated the pilot programme in eight states, culminating in a national competition in Mexico City. “[The foundation’s staff] were all crying at the end of the tournament. They were very touched, so they said that they would like to do it all over the country, because obviously they were sensitive to all the social problems in Mexico. Back then, the governments were nasty, taking all the money, putting no money back on youth and programmes—nothing at all. So our youth was really hopeless. It was very easy for a young, poor man to get engaged in crime. So there was a huge need for a programme like this.”
With Fundacion Telmex’s confirmed backing, Copto expanded to the entire country. Still, it was and remains a lean operation: “My staff is just only four of us for 32 states, so we have to find a way of being able to do it.”
The team divided the country up between them and set about building a structure and approach that involved partnering with complementary local organisations. Copto describes is as casting a safety net: “So we start developing this net that we’re supposed to be servicing the at-risk youth, and we start growing this huge net with services for them.”
Sustaining that net is taxing work. “The thing is that with this work, every weekend I’m out somewhere in the state, and it’s really hard,” Copto says. The travel is relentless; the conditions are also arduous, with the sessions at times having to operate in locations that can reach more than 40 or 50 degrees celsius: “And we have to do that 32 times.”
It was taxing on family life, too. Ultimately, it wasn’t possible to have both. “I got divorced. My kids grew up and they went back to Canada. So I’m on my own,” Copto says. They’re happy working and studying there, and Copto can periodically visit them.
Alongside that, his work to address the vast social issues in Mexico continues. “It’s been a long journey. I do love it, though. I love it. This is my job, but it’s not my job, it’s my passion. And every time I walk into any state, and I see kids who were with us before, and they start telling me what they do, what they have achieved, it’s just like, wow.”
While some players have gone on to obtain professional football contracts, it’s not the glamour of the footballers turning pro that especially impresses or motivates Copto. He instead references players who have changed their lives’ paths, staying off drugs for significant periods of time and stepping away from gang-related affiliations and anti-social behaviour.
Inbuilt into the Mexican street soccer programme is that players remain involved and help mentor and coach the next year’s players. “After that, they have to take on their lives,” Copto says, recognising that the latter can be just as, if not more, challenging. “So that’s the whole idea,’ he says. ‘We can keep them engaged until they get on their own feet and are able to move on.’
There’s also an education component. “Fundacion Telmex gives players a scholarship after the tournament, so if they want to start school again, they can access support. It’s been working. It’s been like this wheel where everything is coming back bigger.” That is, the number of people involved is increasing, as are the positive outcomes.
One former player that stands out in Copto’s memory is one who studied to become a journalist. He went from interviewee to interviewer. “I was so proud of him when he approached me with a microphone and a camera man to interview me. He was saying thank you.”
The player passed away about a year after that moment, after being involved in a car accident. It’s difficult to make sense of the tragedy but is perhaps emblematic of the brevity and often unpredictable and unfair turns life takes, but also the enormity of the impact and resonance of Copto’s work.
Players go through a long process to become the cohesive, well-drilled team we witness at the Homeless World Cup each year, Copto explains: they are first selected for their home state team, often with players they don’t know. They attend the national tournament where they play against teams from 31 other states. From there, players are selected for the Homeless World Cup based on a range of factors, and not purely on skill.
Post-selection, players return to their home states and continue training, alone and at their own pace, as they prepare for the Homeless World Cup. ‘There’s nobody to push them to do what they’re supposed to do. They just do it because they want to be here, they want to be part of it, so they find time to do it.’
A week or a few weeks before the Homeless World Cup, the players come together at a high-performance training facility where they work together as much on their mindset as their physical football skills. The environment helps them hone that and the days are full, from when players wake until they retire to bed. “We’re practicing on the track, on the pitch, in the classroom, group therapy, educational workshops. So their mind is so clear what they want—part of the work we do is set up goals for your life: What do you want?”
With a history of the preceding Mexican teams winning the Homeless World Cup, they want to continue the winning tradition. “Because we’re champions, but they’re not champions. You know, the generation before is the ones who are champions. But they feel committed. They focus,” Copto explains. But, Copto says, “We’re not here for the winning. There’s a lot more in the back—more important things in the back.:
He references an insight esteemed Premier League coach Pep Guardiola imparted when he visited the Mexican programme: “He said 85% of the games are mental, only 15% are physical, so you need to work with your mind.’ That advice has stayed with Copto, and it aligns with his own psychology- and counselling-based approach.
Copto subsequently navigates the line between the players’ desire to do their country proud and the need to focus on addressing social and cultural issues. “I like to tell the story, because sometimes people think that we’re just bringing football stars to be the champions. But the most important thing, as I say to the players, is you have to enjoy it. You have to be happy… Let’s just enjoy it. Winning or losing doesn’t really matter, as long as you’re enjoying it.”
Daniel Copto is the Manager of the Mexican Teams at the Homeless World Cup - find out more about about Street Soccer Mexico.
Words: Fiona Crawford
Photos: Anita Milas