Liberi Nantes, the team born for the boys of the reception centers: “The word that defines us is a family”

The project Liberi Nantes He was born inside a stadium, a stadium that with his racist choirs and discrimination no longer liked a group of fans of football. The sport they loved could not be that Alberto Urbinatinow president of Liberi Nantes, and his friends. For this reason they created a team, which always plays with the same ball, but writes a whole other story, a team made young migrants refugees and asylum seekers, guests of the reception centers of Rome and its province. “Ours was an initiative that started from below,” explains Urbinati, “we went to the reception centers and proposed to the boys to form a football team. For ten years we also participated in the official championship without making points, because we could not register the boys according to the rules in force. For us, however, the important thing was to play. We were interested in bringing this message of contrast to that culture that took shape in the stadiums. We wanted the Roman boys to have the opportunity to meet other guys who came from other cultural contexts, play football and maybe finish the game saying that, all in all, there are no great differences between them. We believed in direct contact, not in the only numerical story of migration ».

The headquarters is in the Pietralata district and the date of birth is 2007. Almost twenty years later, in 2024/2025, the project allowed 225 young refugees and disadvantaged to access free of charge to sports, improving their physical and mental well -being, favoring the sense of belonging and inclusion to the local community.

Liberi Nantes is among the six nominations projects in the category Laureus Sport for Good Awardsport for the common good, of the Laureus Awards, the Oscars of sport. In this special category, individuals or organizations are rewarded which, according to members of the Laureus World Sports Academy, a jury made up of 69 sports legends, have made a significant contribution in the social sphere, using sport as therapeutic tool to improve the lives of boys and girls.

Laureus for Liberi Nantes

Explains Giulia Lucherini, project manager of Laureus Italia Sport for Good Foundation And of the Liberi Nantes project for the Foundation: «This category in particular is particularly representative of Laureus and better contains what are the founding values ​​of Laureus, founded in 2000 on the inspiration of Nelson Mandela and his sentence:”Sport has the power to change the world“. Liberi Nantes is a project that is based inclusion and accessibility. We activated the collaboration with them when, together with the social enterprise with children and Play for Change, we launched the project of the community sports centers (also in Naples and Palermo editor’s note). Our goal was to give value and importance to sports realities that were in the area. Free Nantes represents precisely because it is a garrison of legality within a peripheral neighborhood of Rome Problems from school abandonment to educational poverty to social retreat to the difficulty of integration “.

The strong point of the association is the ability I offer free sports activities to girls and boys, girls and boys, but also to adults, but “also to offer a safe space for families”. There are educational activities, an after -school, orientation courses. The keywords are inclusiveness and accessibility. «We believe that sport is for everyone and therefore nobody should remain behind and nobody should be excluded. This is a job that we at Laureus do in the area, a demanding job in relations with local realities. We try not only to provide free sports activities, but also to accompany the beneficiaries of our projects, therefore the girls and boys who will then be the girls and boys of the future, and we always do it by putting the person in the center. Available are the Tutor Laureus, sports psychologists and training courses for coaches ».

Sport is at the center of the Laureus Sport for Good Italy Foundation and a means for social and educational activities for those who would not have the opportunity to have the opportunity to do sports. There are many activities that involved over 3,000 children in more than 20 different sports activities and multiple collaborations with territorial organizations and ambassadors, champions in sport and beyond, which support projects in Italy. The satisfaction is also personal for Giulia Lucherini: «I am happy when I go to the field, I go to follow projects, I see the girls and boys who play together. For me the greatest satisfaction is that nobody is left behind ».

Giulia Sano ‘

Liberi Nantes’ voice

Today the Liberi Nantes project offers a variety of sports and cultural activities that involve young people of different social backgrounds: male and female football is practiced, from 6 to 40 years, athletics, and educational and cultural activities such as the Italian language, photography and urban art course are promoted. The rule remains that of the beginning as Alberto Urbinati explains. “Those who play sports with us, never pay. Applies to everyone: Migrants who come from the reception centers or who are already integrated with a job, girls and boys of the Pietralata district who are wealthy or who live in family homes or with great economic difficulties. Nobody pays to play sports with us. This means that the money procures the board of directors of the Association. I am the president and there are other figures next to me who do as much or more of me, we do a great work of design and fundraising. Here the Laureus Foundation comes into play with its support. We pay the technicians, who deals with the administration, the costs of the fields. Since 2010 we have been managers of a sports facility recovered in the heart of the Borgata di Pietralata. We put a space that was in disuse at the center of the life of the neighborhood ».

Giulia Sano ‘

When the request to be able to send guys to play football the answer is always yes from the reception centers. All centers in the Rome area know Liberi Nantes. All children can play and thanks to the project of community sports centers, the activities are varied and for all ages. «The most recurring word we hear when we are made a compliment is a family: The first to tell us are the boys who do not feel judged, as in a real family. In our first team there are eighty percent, non -European boys, almost all African. We have soldiers from a nearby barracks. Anyone who sets foot with us feel free to express themselves without there being prejudices and conditioning. Let’s take people for what they are, without labels ».

Giulia Sano ‘

The neighborhood was indifferent at the beginning, but something changed with Covid: an opening came from the association. “Now with a team made by migrants we have become the neighborhood team.” One thing that fills with pride like the candidacy for Laureus Sport for Good Award. «He surprised us and given a lot of charge to enter the projects chosen worldwide. This leads us to move forward on the road we have taken. In the youths there are guys in the neighborhood that descend from the buildings that overlook the field and come to play with us and with South American boys who are perhaps guests of home-family or are in precarious housing situations. All together become a team and this thing is the beauty of Liberi Nantes that we must simply continue to carry on “.