Community & Keepmoat
Abdelaziz, Doncaster
To mark Football Welcomes month, Goal Click teamed up with Amnesty International UK for a special series telling stories from refugees across the country through football. Now in its fifth year, Football Welcomes, supported by players of the People’s Postcode Lottery, celebrates the contribution players from a refugee background make to the game, and highlights the role football can play in creating more welcoming communities for refugees.
We worked with five partners of the Football Welcomes Community Project - Leicester City in the Community, Liverpool County FA, Middlesbrough FC Foundation, Aston Villa Foundation, and Club Doncaster Foundation.
With Club Doncaster Foundation, our storyteller was Abdelaziz, originally from Sudan.
Can you introduce yourself and tell us who is in these photos?
My name is Abdelaziz. I originally come from Sudan. My jobs are delivering with Amazon Flex and for XPO Logistics as a ASOS warehouse operative in Barnsley. These are my friends from football and work. I met most of them at football but some of them at Amazon where I work. I have known them for two years. The lady is Denise, who is a volunteer at our local conversation club where we all go when we need help and advice.
What did you try to show with the photos? Was there any wider meaning with the photos?
The photos were taken at our Football Welcomes session at Keepmoat Stadium in Doncaster. I wanted to show how much we all love our football sessions and how happy we are when we play together. Football is our happy place.
Football is important to me because it releases me from all the stresses of life and work - as I work three jobs now. Football is the biggest part of my life. Doncaster Rovers is a good team and important to the local community. It has now been long time without football. It’s so boring. I hope that we won’t be locked down again. I will be so happy when I play football at Keepmoat every week.
When and why did you start playing football?
I started when I was younger but there is not a lot of football where I come from, so when I came to Doncaster it was a blessing as we can play so much football. My ambition for the future is to keep playing football.
To what extent has football helped you make friends and get to know people in the local community?
Football has helped a lot, as we get a lot of help from the coaches. Lots of football boots, socks, Doncaster Rovers gear and they give us bikes to get around to work and to football.
