Stockholm | January 24, 2017 – What began as an integration experiment three years ago in a small Swedish town 200km north of the capital has grown into what many in Sweden are calling a refugee success story on ice and Borlänge’s answer to Cool Runnings.
The Somali National Bandy team will participate in the World Championship in Sweden, it’s their second time at the tournament.
Three year,s ago, when the team played in its inaugural tournament in Russia they won the hearts of Swede’s nationwide despite not winning a single game. Reporters, filmmakers and musicians gushed about the young Somali teenagers – most of them in their 20’s – who had never been on ice yet managed to learn to skate and represent not only their country but their host country as well.
Bandy is a sport that can be best described as a less violent version of ice hockey and played with a ball instead of a puck. The sport is relatively unknown internationally but in the Nordic countries and Russia it is popular and enjoys strong viewership.
The players have been training relentlessly for the past year in preparation for the tournament and have made immense improvements in their skating, passing, strength training and strategy of the game. They’re coached by Per Fosshaug, a Swedish legend in Bandy and Alexander Tarasenko. The coaches believe that the Somali national team skill level is on par with the best 14-year-old clubs in Sweden, despite the fact that they picked up a stick and skates less than four years ago.
Most the young men on the roster say that the game has helped them understand Swedish culture better and has given them more confidence. An issue that refugee’s struggle with when migrating to a new and often strange country. This comes at a tumultuous time in national politics. Sweden, once hailed as a humanitarian superpower has struggled to grapple with the influx of refugee’s and asylum seekers in recent years and has seen a rise of far-right neo-Nazi politics such as the Nordic Resistance Movement which has strong roots in Borlange.
This is exactly what the team’s founder Hans Grandin had in mind when he got the idea to put a team of Somali’s from Borlange together for an integration project before his retirement.
For now, the team looks forward to the tournament. They play their first game against Canada, not exactly a powerhouse but one of the strongest teams in the group stage.
“We meet the group’s best team, Canada, as I have heard. So we do not have great expectations. I expect just that we play our game and have fun while we’re here!”, says player Abdirahman Barkhadle.
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Xigasho: Hiiraan Online
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Xafiiska Wararka Qaranimo Online | Mogadishu, Somalia
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