Following the wise words of the First President of South Africa and anti-apartheid activist, one trailblazer is on a quest to play football with the locals of every country to show how the beautiful game can bring us all together as one humanity.
Adam Siddiq, a first-generation Afghan-American, shared that when he was a kid, football was what helped bridge his early friendships amidst a language and cultural barrier he was still adapting to. Since his formative years, the passion for football stayed with him as he rose through the ranks of youth club divisions, eventually playing for one of Chivas USA’s MLS Academy Youth Teams. While a fateful injury shifted his path from progressing through with a college sponsorship offer and beyond, the spirit of the beautiful game always was ablaze in his heart.
On a calm spring day in 2013, Siddiq was practicing his shooting technique. After about a couple hours of taking numerous shots on goal, he was staring at all the empty conjoining football fields, thinking about how he wished they were full with people to play with. He walked over to the goal to collect the balls for another round of shots when he was suddenly struck with the idea of playing the beautiful game with people from every nation. “I thought about how it [football] is a metaphor…how two strangers who don’t even speak the same language can pass a ball together and form a connection…how the game is about teamwork to accomplish meaningful goals together,” he said. Coincidentally, he would begin his journey with TBG:195, The Beautiful Game in all 195 Sovereign Countries, in the late spring a decade later.
To date, Siddiq has filmed himself playing football with locals in 21 countries. He’s been uploading videos that are titled after each country he’s visited along the journey on his YouTube channel to showcase not just the spirit of the beautiful game, but also the beauty and diversity of each country. “So far I’ve played and filmed in a bunch of European countries. I’m hoping to finish up in Europe this year, but first I will go to Asia. My goal is to have finished playing, filming and publishing videos for every country before the 2026 FIFA World Cup, but we’ll see how it all unfolds.”
When asked about how he finds locals to play football with in each country, Siddiq stated, “Everything has been spontaneous. I usually ask everyone I meet, from the taxi driver, to the hotel receptionist, to random people on the streets where I can play football. Most of the time, I’ll be wandering around, exploring a place thoroughly, going to local parks and football fields. If I see people playing or hanging out, I’ll ask them if I can play with them. Almost every time, they’ll say yes. I was also able to collaborate with some tech companies that have pioneered apps that connect people to play football pick-up games organized through them for a small fee.”
Featured in his YouTube series, Siddiq documented several games in Spain and Belgium with two of these football app companies: Celebreak and Play Kurt. “I love what they’re doing and want to see them succeed and expand. I’m always happy to collaborate with companies and organizations that are making football more abundant in our daily lives. I want to see an exponential rise in grassroots football everywhere…all around the world. It’s great, not just for the health of the people, but also for the health of the society and the world.”
From a last-minute invite to cover Press at an intense UEFA game, to playing futsal in the old city walls of Dubrovnik overlooking the Adriatic, to juggling the ball with a local referee in the stadium for San Marino’s national team, Siddiq touched on a handful of unique highlights from his journey so far. One that stood out the most was when he visited Iceland. “My AirBnB host connected me with a group of locals who play a pick-up game a few times a week. They invited me to come play, sending me a pin drop on Google maps for the field location. I showed up to the exact coordinates of the field and started passing the ball around with a few of the people there. They weren’t Icelandic, so I figured it might be a group of college students from abroad. When they asked me who I was, I told them that I received the invite from the WhatsApp group. I showed them my phone and they were confused, as they had a WhatsApp group, but not the one I was in. Then, I noticed some of the guys were speaking Dari (Farsi) to each other and asked them if they were Afghan. They said yes and asked me the same. The group who had originally invited me ended up playing on a field nearby and I enjoyed playing football for a few hours with fellow Afghans, surprisingly for the first time in my life…and in Iceland of all places.”
Perhaps one of the most unique factors about Siddiq’s expedition is the fact that, being an Afghan-American, he has both one of the strongest and weakest passports when it comes to travel. A U.S. passport permits him to travel to 144 countries visa-free, where an Afghan passport gets him access to only 7. Passport privilege is a topic and issue that has become part of the mainstream dialogue more these days. In Siddiq’s hands are the two extremes of passport privilege, considering the impossibility of him being able to accomplish this feat with only an Afghan passport.
Siddiq intends to set new world records through this journey as he strives to become the first person to play football in every sovereign country in the world, the first to play a sport in every sovereign country, and to set the record for playing football with people from the most nationalities/every nationality. However, these world records and achievements aren’t the primary focus of his world football odyssey.
The 3x FIFA World Cup winner and Brazilian football legend, Pele, once said, “Football is the only sport where you put people together, it doesn’t matter if you are rich, or poor, or black, or white. It is one nation. This is the beauty of football.” This is the heart of what Siddiq seeks to capture on film and convey to the world. As he racks up passport stamps in pursuit of setting world records, Siddiq’s journey shows us all that despite differences in language, culture, race and religion, we are all parts of one humanity, and that life is more enriching for all of us when we embrace both our similarities and our differences.
“Ultimately, I want to inspire a global movement of football that personifies the power the beautiful game has in dissolving the barriers that keep us feeling separate and isolated from one another…that focuses on building the bridges that foster friendship, understanding and peace amongst people of different backgrounds…from all across the world.”
