How do you solve a problem like CONIFA?
Draft for Scumbag College. Sung to, you know, that song from The Sound of Music . Hi, I’m Haduhi, and I’m both a football nerd and an anarchist. A bad combination, some might say. Almost certainly not a proper football man. You know the type. The ones for whom the world is neat and tidy, full of firm lines and fixed categories: rules are rules, gender is binary, the long ball is king, and political boundaries are best left unquestioned. I’m not that. I’ve always found more beauty in the loose ends and rough edges of the game, in the messy overlaps, the improvisation, the refusal to play by the book. Which is probably why I’m also fascinated by CONIFA – the Confederation of Independent Football Associations. It’s a footballing body for those who don’t quite fit the official story: national teams representing unrecognized nations, stateless people, and breakaway regions that have slipped through the cracks of the international order. Kurdistan, Tamil...