This is the story of Giulia, a 9-year-old girl who became passionate about football thanks to her father.
Thanks to the “Sport for Change “Fare Rete!” project, born from the collaboration between Fondazione Milan and the A.S Cometa in the city of Como, Giulia can learn to play football with her teammates.
Sport for Change is a sports and educational programme that Fondazione Milan has been running for some time, through which it wants to make its contribution to the fight against educational poverty by offering the opportunity to play sport to children and young people who may be subject to social exclusion and discrimination.
The lessons, after a series of “stop&go”, continue to proceed in compliance with the anti-coveted rules implemented with great care by the A.S Cometa.
In fact, training has resumed in presence but with due spacing during exercises. The field has been divided into tracks and each player has his own track where he has to carry out the exercises individually. The focus of the training is on technique and coordination with the ball, e.g. individual dribbling and shooting at goal. Some of the exercises are mixing, but always avoiding physical contact.
Giulia is experimenting with different roles in the team but already has clear ideas. The role of goalkeeper is not her first choice because Giulia cares a lot about her glasses, she likes to have an active role on the field, as shown by her character: energetic and exuberant.

She really misses not being able to play and win the end-of-training “matches”, as well as not being able to play against the other teams in the league.
Moreover, the thing she missed the most during the lockdown period were the meetings with her teammates and educators, who were always ready to support her and her friends both in their weekly training and also in the moments off the field.

From Giulia’s experience we can see once again that what the children value most is the opportunity to share something with their peers.
This reminds us, once again, how much sport is an educational opportunity to fully understand the true value of sharing and being together with others, which is a value we cannot take for granted.

NB: at the time of the publication of the story, sporting activities were permitted, following the relevant instructions from the institutions