Our Opinion on the ISFA World Cup 2024 Documentary

Documentaries aren't a common occurrence in Street Football, so when they come along they deserve to be celebrated. From the outset we knew that the ISFA World Cup 2024 was a great event for all involved, but this documentary humanised the people behind the event, and that is awesome to see.

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The Salient Issue we Learnt About!

Honestly, this probably shouldn't be a surprise since we were invited originally to be a part of this event, but what shocked us the most was the lack of funding support for the teams who were travelling. That is a wild expectation for teams to cover those expenses especially from South America, Oceania and Africa. Hence Africa had no representation and Oceania only had one with a team from Australia. I'll play devils advocate against myself and explain that expecting the funding from ISFA is also just as unfair and just as wild. In order for ISFA to secure funding in the future they need a proof of concept, they need to be able to show that they can do it and that it works, which I personally believe they achieved with flying colours. However let's not forget that the majority of the teams were European and Northern Asian, meaning that some teams paid exorbitantly more than others, such as Australia, and this was actually our reason for falling out with organisers. Over the years if funding doesn't come in some form you will lose these distant teams. It's not a question of "if" but "when". I have experience in this exact scenario. As part of the Gone20 ecosystem we also manage SYDNEY STREET CREW, who were accepted to become a part of Australia's new and exciting National Futsal League. Same deal as this world cup, teams pay for their own expenses to make it all happen. Year 1 was awesome, year 2 had 2 teams less, and year 3 had 2 less again, year 4 probably won't happen. The sad reality is that you can only expect people to stay around for so long when it's as expensive as it is and on their own dime, and this Futsal League was only along the East Coast of Australia, not from Australia or Argentina or South Africa over to Latvia. That was the biggest surprise, as I knew this was the plan, but I thought they would have made an effort to sort out funding or some help in any way, as we learnt through the documentary, this was not sorted and is clearly a massive oversight. What this does show is the belief and determination from the teams involved, I really hope this event stays around by year 5, because 1 success is a lot easier than numerous. A great solution would be trying to host this event in a middle ground, or moving it around the world over the years, meaning you give other countries a chance, which to be fair may already be in ISFA's plans.

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The Great!

The event was put together super well, I really enjoyed watching Antons journey to set up the event, from local marketing, to filming ad campaigns, releasing tickets, and to him personally carrying in and setting up equipment for the event, that is always exciting and inspiring to see. The matches also looked awesome, I will say that 3v3 will need some form of altering to stop teams parking the bus resulting in so many nil-nil draws, maybe a shot clock would work, hard to implement but an idea none the less. The management team in general did an awesome job, the match ball looked great, the teams kits looked great, the venue looked great, and the vibe also seemed.. great.

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I hope ISFA and Ghetto Games continue to make great strides, this was an awesome watch from an awesome event. It's easy to have issues with any small part of a huge operation, but overall this was truly a massive success, and I appreciated the honesty in the documentary which shows the reality of putting on an event of this calibre with so many moving pieces.

Looking forward to watching the 2025 documentary.