More Than A Film: Team Austria - Serkan Yavuz
More Than A Film: This series explores the real players and management teams at the heart of The Homeless World Cup, the tournament is the inspiration for the feature film, The Beautiful Game. Serkan was part of Team Austria in the film.
|It’s not easy being a referee, as Serkan explains “everyone who has a mouth speaks back.” Image: Rebecca Corbett
“Footballers are cool, but I think referees are the best”
Player turned referee, Serkan is back in his kit again as a player in new film The Beautiful Game. It also gives him another opportunity to play for Austria, who he first represented at the Homeless World Cup in Melbourne in 2008.
It might be more than fifteen years since he played in Australia, but the memories come back as if it was yesterday.
“Every feeling that a human can have, I had it. We played the first game, the opening game – it was Australia verses Austria. I scored the first goal of the tournament and we won! It was really amazing!”
Serkan was selected to play for Austria after playing in a local football tournament with his friends. He didn’t realise the team manager was watching until he got a call at work the next day.
At the time, Serkan was working as a plumber and when the manager mentioned Melbourne, he had to jump out of the way to narrowly avoid the hammer he’d just dropped.
But it wasn’t all plain sailing, he impressed in training, but the team were struggling to secure his visa. Four weeks to go, no news. Two weeks to go, no news. One week to go, no news. He’d started to give up hope when four days before the flight was due to leave, he finally got his visa. He was going.
23 hours later and inspired by his teammates who want to “help him make something positive of my life”, he landed in Melbourne. Twenty-four hours later he would be scoring a goal in the opening game in front of thousands of supporters.
Serkan grew up in Austria with his parents who had moved to Vienna from Turkey for work. Struggling to find the balance, Serkan’s father wasn’t around very much and became increasingly angrier and more frustrated.
His mother tried to keep out of the way, but Serkan sometimes took the brunt of his father’s frustration. As a teenager, his dad would regularly hit him.
One day Serkan cracked. His dad made a comment about him having to cut his hair as it had got too long. He gave him an ultimatum, if he didn’t, he would have to move out. Serkan moved out. That night he slept in the local park and turned to his friends for help.
“When I was younger, I went with false friends in the wrong direction. I did things that weren’t good.”
He didn’t have anywhere to go, anything to eat or anywhere to shower. Instead, he had to go to the local swimming pool to wash and struggled to find food to eat. For a long time, he tried to hide that he was homeless and was ashamed.
Starting to talk, Serkan explained, was like a weight being lifted and the shame of being homeless started to fade.
“You take the stone from your body and throw it away. I think ‘ok being homeless is not good’ but a lot of people have bigger problems.”
“We can talk to each other, we can see each other, I can see you and you can see me, I can hear you, you know? This is wonderful, this is magical.”
After returning from the Homeless World Cup in Melbourne, Serkan was offered the opportunity to train as a referee.
|Serkan Yavuz (left) with teammate Markus is a former Homeless World Cup player turned referee who was part of the Austrian team in The Beautiful Game.
The course had ten people on it, and it concluded with a small tournament where they could put what they’d learnt into practice. Head coach Paul Nagtegaal let them take it in turns one by one.
He laughs as he remembers the first time he refereed a game, “I can’t wait to have a go and when my time comes, I blow the whistle so hard it makes me jump!”
He impressed Paul, doing well, and was invited to referee at the Homeless World Cup in Tampere 2020.
“It was amazing, my emotions are dancing and then Coronavirus stops all the emotions.”
It’s not easy being a referee, as Serkan explains “everyone who has a mouth speaks back.”
“My father always tells me when you do something, do it right or leave it. I do my best. Footballers are cool but I think referees are the best. I think we can always do and be better.”
“Before I was playing football, we played a game that when the referee whistles, we must dance. In Turkish we say, we must dance. Now I referee, and we all dance together.”
Now he’s dancing with all the other players in Rome as filming takes place for ‘The Beautiful Game’.
“We have fun together, we stay together, eat together, laugh together. It doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a woman or a boy, or twenty or like me in my forties, we have fun.”
“You know when you fall, you must stand up and go forward, go forward, go forward.”
And for Serkan going forward, means one thing, lots more dancing.
Our partner in Austria is Homeless World Cup Austria, find out more about their work and how they’re supporting people like Serkan.
Austria have been a Homeless World Cup member country since the inaugural Homeless World Cup in Graz in 2003.
Words: Rebecca Corbett