An update on the Homeless World Cup ...

Maybe you remember the column back in September (linked here) on the two Los Angeles members, Densi Diaz and Johny Figueroa, of the 2008 U.S. Homeless World Cup squad.

Eight homeless men ranging in age from 19 to 41 from California, Georgia, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, and Texas make up the U.S. team. One player, Cornelius Bracy Cruz of Santa Rosa, grew up playing for top soccer clubs and even earned a scholarship to Howard University. Drawn into drugs and gangs, he was sleeping on the street and homeless for the better part of three years, instead of playing college soccer before he turned his life around. The 24-year-old has been sober for more than a year and is training to be an electrician.

"I feel so good about my life right now," he says." It's important for me to remember where I was, but I am really excited to think about where I am going. Street soccer gave me a goal, it gave me hope."

The team congregated in L.A. during Thanksgiving week before heading to Melbourne, Australia to start the sixth Homeless World Cup, which has teams from 56 nations (plus eight all-female teams in the inaugural Women's Homeless World Cup).

During the preliminary stage, the U.S. lost to Hong Kong on penalty kicks today, hours after beating France on penalty kicks. The Americans lost their first game to Ireland 11-2 on Monday and then 7-2 to Romania on Tuesday. That means the U.S. misses out moving on to the top tier of competition, but will continue on in a second-division tier.

Lawrence Cann, the founder and chief executive of Street Soccer USA/Help USA in New York, is with the American squad and is writing on The New York Times "Goal" blog during the tournament, with his first posting up (linked here).

==More on the tournament, with the schedule (official site linked here)
==The U.S. team's link on the official site (linked here)
==A link to our column off the USA Street Soccer site (linked here)
==A followup to our column via our blog (linked here)
==The movie "Kicking It" available on DVD (linked here)
==The LAHomeless.org blog (linked here)