What a genius idea to play pick up soccer across the world. Four soccer-playing filmmakers abandon jobs, renew passports, trade novels for LONELY PLANETS and travel around the world in search of pick-up soccer games. The film centers around Gwendolyn Oxenham and Ryan White, both former college soccer players, Oxenham at Duke, and Boughen at Notre Dame.
They plan on visiting twenty-five countries and using soccer pickup games to tell a story about the country, the people, the culture – using soccer as a way to connect.
I love the line, “Do they kiss in this country?”
World Hum: On The Soccer Project Web site, you tout soccer’s power to unite people. Why do you think it can do that?
Gwendolyn Oxenham: Simon Cooper puts it nicely when he says the only things humans attend more than soccer games is church. Soccer is the world’s game and everyone from Muslim women in Afghanistan to old men in Speedos in Brazil play. It’s such a connective force. The ability to kick a ball can create such an intimacy and feeling of commonality.