Mata: Changing football one player at a time
Juan Mata has written a personal column to explain the inspiration behind the 'Common Goal' initiative that he recently helped to launch, promising more players will join him in donating one per cent of their salaries to charity...
GIVING BACK THROUGH FOOTBALL
The idea behind the Common Goal project is to use professional football as a tool for social change, in order to have a positive impact on many millions of lives around the world. The inspiration for it was the feeling of privilege to be living the dream of many kids all around the world: playing professional football and representing a club like Manchester United.
So, in our aim to give back from our privileged position, we thought about a big, collective project bringing professional footballers together, meaning we can have a bigger reach and help more. So that’s the inspiration: trying to give back through football, which has a unique power to bring people together around the world.
An amazing project starts today. Please take a moment to check it out. ⚽❤🌏 #CommonGoal https://t.co/UJbedfXnpW
— Juan Mata García (@juanmata8) August 4, 2017
Mats Hummels was the first player to to be announced on the scheme. He texted me to say that he loved the project, that he was waiting for someone to do something like that, and how he’d like to join us and be part of it. So it was an easy conversation because he already wanted to do it. We have so many other big names joining as well, which we are going to announce step by step.
People are joining who play football not at that high a level, but they feel like they could help and want to be in too. With that, we want to show that it’s not just for big names or famous football players – it’s for everyone that feels football is a big part of their lives. We are bringing in women that love football, it’s a nice, global and big project that we hope will be successful in helping lots of people.
Having someone like Mats – who is obviously a very good player at the top of his career, playing for Bayern Munich, a World Cup winner for Germany – on board at the beginning helps a lot. We have some more big names coming soon, which I’m excited about. That’s important at the beginning, but we want to make sure everyone can join, not just footballers – anybody that loves football can join and help in so many different ways.
IT MAKES SENSE
I have spoken to my team-mates about it and we are hopeful that a few will be joining in as well. We are doing this voluntarily, we want to do it, but the ultimate goal is that this project can be embedded within professional football’s structure. I think that would be nice and the last step to make it even bigger and help more people. It’s not about what Mats gives, or what I give, it’s about bringing people together as much we can. Obviously the more people involved in Common Goal, the bigger the project’s reach and the more people we can help.
The response to the initiative has been great. I have to say, we’re really grateful for the welcome from football players, from journalists and from people that make decisions in football. I think everyone understands that something like this just has to be done. It makes sense; we want everybody in the world to understand what we are doing here, and make people really excited about it. It’s good news that everyone likes it.
Benvenuto Giorgio! ⚽🌍❤ #CommonGoal @CommonGoalOrg @chiellini pic.twitter.com/7GEkr4qtre
— Juan Mata García (@juanmata8) September 29, 2017
Being a footballer takes up my life, and is what gets my time, but it doesn’t disturb me to have conversations with Jurgen Griesbeck, who is the CEO of Street Football World, the organisation that I have set up the Common Goal initiative with. I really like it because I’m really passionate about it.
Street Football World has been working 15 years with over two million kids. They have great experience in that sense and they have projects in five continents. That is another good thing about the Common Goal project – if you want to be a part of it, and you identify with a place such as Manchester, you can do it.
It’s about, ‘Okay, I identify with a project where I am from, and I can do it, and I can do it through Common Goal.’ They make it easy for you and that’s the ultimate goal of it – to make things easy, transparent, efficient, and I feel that’s really important to allow everyone to choose where they want to help.
In terms of a unifying force, I’ve never seen anything like football. Maybe music can come close to it for that level of bringing people together. But I don’t think there is anything that brings people together and unites people the way football does. That’s why I see a massive force for good in that sense, and that’s what we’re trying to achieve – to use all the good, this big force that football has in many millions of people’s lives, and to make something out of it.
The next step – which we are hoping to make soon – is to have conversations with people who make decisions in football to make it part of professional football’s structure. Not just voluntarily, it’s going to be within the structure.
We are getting towards that by bringing people in and bringing players together. The next step is to have conversations and take this project forward. It’s important for people to know that there is so much work going into this to make it consistent for the future. It’s not easy.
I’m very passionate about this project but of course but it’s not about me. I do it because I want to see something like this done within football, and someone has to start it. I had these conversations with Jurgen, who has helped me in that sense, and we started it. But, I would love to see everyone see Common Goal as something already known, already normal, and already routine for football.