More Than A Film: Team Portugal - Vitor Gonçalves
|Vitor Gonçalves (right) with his team mate Mariano during filming of The Beautiful Game in Rome
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.
“Football completely changed me as a person”
Vitor Gonçalves is a plumber, but in July and August 2021 he took a break from his day job to be a football extra for Team Portugal in feature film, ‘The Beautiful Game’.
His Roman Holiday, representing his country in a fictional Homeless World Cup in Rome, brought back memories of playing for Portugal at the Homeless World Cup in Amsterdam in 2015.
Portugal finished third in the top tier of the competition after Mexico and Ukraine. They even beat Brazil in the semi-final.
“Representing Portugal was inexplicable. Amsterdam is a beautiful city and it was an incredible experience, it was completely different to what we were expecting at the Homeless World Cup. Meeting the other teams and players was something special”
Being part of the Homeless World Cup was a transformational experience for Vitor.
“We might have problems, but when we see other people’s situations, we feel like ours aren’t issues anymore because they’ve had it harder than we had. That made our team resilient.
“Football completely changed me as a person, when I took part in the national competition for the first time, I realised that the tournament wasn’t only about football, it was an emotional and mental experience too.
“It’s not just about the game, through football people can develop mental strength and emotional intelligence. That turns humans into superhumans.”
Vitor first kicked a ball when he was six years old, and football has played a key role in his life ever since.
“I managed to overcome some of the problems I was facing in my family and that motived me to expect more from life.
“The people I met is what kept me playing, I’ve met so many people through football. Meeting other people and seeing what they’re doing motivates me to be better.
“Football spreads love, the passion we have for each other, the relationship we create with our team. This is all football; it doesn’t only come from football, but it’s been my relationship with the game. It’s made me a better person, and football has always been a way to escape the problems I was facing. That’s still the case today.”
“Football for me is everything that is positive. In this case because it helped me to meet other people, and that started to make me a better person. From this, I learnt about other people’s problems which made me resilient. I think that’s what football does, it helps you mix with other people, learn about other cultures and other life experience.
It’s made me a better person and that makes me love football, not just because it’s a game that I love, but because of what I’ve learnt from others around me and will continue to learn, God willing.”
“I hope these projects, the Homeless World Cup specifically, never stops because it changes lives. This is important to me because it changed my life, and it is going to change many others.”
Portugal are one of our 70+ member countries. Our partner representing Portugal is CAIS Association - find out more about their programme and how they’re helping people like Vitor.
Words: Rebecca Corbett