Recap from Banatul Tournament
by Ella Fassler (Stop Cop City United player)
For the past three years on Memorial Day weekend, members of Woodbine Football Club and Stop Cop City United have participated in a marathon all-day football tournament hosted by the Banatul Folklore and Soccer Club, a more than six-decades old Romanian-American social center around the corner from Woodbine. Every year, in whatever configuration of teams, most of us miraculously arrive on time to the Met Oval in Maspeth at the relatively early hour. Perhaps the only thing more electrifying than playing soccer with friends and comrades, is playing soccer with friends and comrades on a pitch overlooking the city skyline with a case of beer on the line!
This year was extra special, because we were joined by some of our new (im)migrant friends from Mauritania, Senegal, and Guinea, who formed their own team, Stockton Boys FC (which won the inagural season of the Autonomous Football League in May). Their $300 entrance fee was generously covered by community donations through a fundraiser we launched on Instagram. Donations flooded in and within days, we raised more than $1,500, which will go towards covering their entrance fees for other tournaments and to help them adjust to life in New York City while navigating draconian immigration laws and treacherous asylum-process.
Other teams were a mix of older and younger hulking Serbians, Germans, and Romanian men who have been connected on the pitch for generations through Banatul and Gottscheer Hall (a local bar). Stop Cop City was the only team with women, non-binary and trans players, aside from a few exceptions. To our surprise we quickly became a fan favorite, and seemed to impress the Eastern European guys, several of whom had expressed that they didn’t expect much from us. Our enthusiastic cheering for the Stockton Boys encouraged a cooperative atmosphere as well. After we scored a goal against a team of giant men, the crowd exploded and continued to congratulate us throughout the day.
It was a hot and humid one. We were drenched in sweat . We celebrated, we strategized, we scored a couple of goals, our keeper saved a bunch. We felt joy, disappointment, camaraderie, frustration. We got to know each other a little bit better. After we missed advancing to playoffs by a sliver (on goal difference), some of us stuck around to cheer on Stockton Boys FC who made it through the next rounds with flying colors. They brought an infectious energy to the pitch, scoring the types of goals one might expect to see only at a professional level—including a beautiful first time back heel that sent the keeper the wrong way. Some moments were tense. A bad call by the ref led to an eruptive outcry of complaints in French, Arabic, Wolof, and other languages. To our amusement, our translator friends were tasked with going onto the pitch to de-escalate disputes, and then after a few minutes of breaking up the rowdy chaos, the games would continue with spirits raised. Ultimately Stockton came in second after losing in an ultra-nerve-racking series of sudden death penalty kicks with dozens of entranced spectators cheering.
The abundance of languages spoken on the pitch was fitting for the diversity of Queens. At one moment, a player of color on a different team asked where one of the Stockton guys had come from. Hearing “Senegal,” he smiled and exclaimed “Kalidou Koulibaly!,” a brilliant Senegalese defender who captained the side which won the African Cup of Nations in 2021. Pointing at himself, he said “Mo Salah,” invoking the Egyptian winger who plays for Liverpool. And thus, a new composite language of soccer stars was in play, facilitating connection between our recently arrived friends and citizens of a city whose government does all it can to isolate and segregate newcomers on arrival.
Football helps us transcend barriers, a true lingua franca, and it can help us bond across other differences as well—including political ones. It’s important for the left to engage with the world outside of its own subcultures and movement spaces, with people who may have completely different beliefs and values and ideas and backgrounds than us, even if it sometimes feels uncomfortable or even offensive, within reason. Like a football match, social change is dynamic and reflexive. Through the slow process of building rapport and trust with our neighbors, we can then exchange thoughts and ideas with each other in good faith, on a level and safe playing field, in this case literally and figuratively.
