Goal-Click: We'll do our utmost best to organise a "home match" back in Milan with the Soweto Stars

Goal Click is a global football storytelling platform, finding people from around the world to tell stories about their football lives and communities. Follow Goal Click on Instagram  @goalclick or read more stories at goal-click.com.

In 2019 the neighbourhood of Dobsonville in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, played host to a special international friendly match: Soweto Stars FC vs AS Velasca. The match resulted from an ongoing friendship between the two clubs.

Italian-based football club AS Velasca are a long-term project founded by Wolfgang Natlacen and four art and football enthusiasts. Founded in 2015 in Milan, Italy, AS Velasca merge the competitive game of football with the beauty of art. ‘Part football club, part work of art’ is the club’s slogan.

Soweto Stars FC is an amateur club founded in 2009 by two brothers Zola and Zuko Manqina. The club pushes a brand of football known as Kasi Flava, focusing on outrageous individual skills and tricks. Plans for a rematch have been delayed by Covid-19.

Two members of AS Velasca, Luciano Pizzi and Arden Day captured the special day. This is part two with Arden Day (artist moniker).

Goal Click (GC): Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your football life?

Arden Day (AD): I'm a sound artist, and I really discovered football as a total art form through AS Velasca.

GC: What did you try to show with the photos? Was there any wider meaning with the photos?

AD: Mostly local fans, the players and some passers-by, the snapshots were taken in Soweto during the match between Velasca and Soweto Stars. It was a bright sunny day with sharp shadows on the clay football ground, so I tried to play with these shadows and sometimes show reactions from the Velasca supporters.

GC: What is your favourite photo?

AD: I remember wanting to snap a Velasca fan (and goalkeeper coach) from the back while he was shouting at the team. 

GC: Are there any good stories connected with the people or teams you photographed?

AD: We all had a mental evening at the Soweto Towers dancing and drinking with the Soweto boys after the match. Most of them are in the photos. Though the pictures were taken during the match, in retrospect they remind us of the incredible bond sealed that night. 

GC: Why is the AS Velasca story so unique and important?

AD: Velasca is unique mostly because there's no money or fame involved and of course mainly because of all the artist contributions that flow into it. Football can be a weird substitute to capitalism. Velasca is the future of football.

GC: Why is the connection with Soweto Stars FC so important for the club?

No one from the entire team had ever been to Africa before and, as we know, Italy is (with Greece) the main entry point for sub-Saharan refugees in Europe, so this match was important in contesting Italy's recent policy of refusing entry to Africans. That's why we'll do our utmost best to organise a "home match" back in Milan with the Soweto Stars.

You can read part one with Luciano Pizzi – AS Velasca here:  Goal-Click: Dobsonville: 'Abandon problems all ye who enter here'