Who Gets to Play Tomorrow

Who Gets to Play Tomorrow?
Soccer Programs, Community Power, and Lasting Social Change
By Clara Bianchi
A community soccer program opens its gates. Who gets to walk through them, and who is still standing outside?
A free session can be inaccessible because of transport costs, unsafe routes, poor scheduling, discriminatory treatment, or a lack of suitable facilities. A crowded field may show that a program is popular without proving that it changed the community. Who Gets to Play Tomorrow? examines what soccer can contribute to social change and what organizers must do beyond the pitch.
This practical book on soccer and social change is written for community organizers, grassroots coaches, educators, nonprofit leaders, and funders who want to build projects that can withstand serious questions.
Inside, discover:
— How to distinguish attendance, participation, reported satisfaction, and lasting outcomes.
— How community soccer programs can identify barriers to safe and affordable play.
— Approaches to youth development through soccer that connect with schools without promising academic miracles.
— Practical choices for girls football inclusion and disability inclusive sports.
— How to support newcomer participation while respecting privacy and avoiding forced personal storytelling.
— Ways to respond to discrimination, manage conflict, and give participants a genuine voice.
— Funding, governance, safeguarding, and continuity decisions that shape sport for development.
— Methods for social impact evaluation that report uncertainty and negative results as carefully as successes.
The book contains eight developed chapters, twelve constructed community-project blueprints, working templates, four ethical decision scenarios, and a source guide covering FIFA Guardians, UNHCR, Unified Sports research, the Homeless World Cup, and discrimination reporting.
Rather than promising that a ball can solve poverty or prejudice, the book shows how to build a responsible program: define the problem, share authority, protect participants, choose realistic outcomes, and learn from evidence.
A club can fill its roster and still exclude the people it hoped to reach. This book helps you ask better questions before the next session begins.
For readers who want community football to leave something useful behind: safe access, fair rules, accountable decisions, and opportunities that remain after the grant ends.
Includes fictional planning scenarios clearly distinguished from documented research. Program operators must follow applicable safeguarding, legal, and professional requirements.