**CAMPAIGN CLOSED**
**THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR HELPING CHEER CHAGOS! TO MAKE ANY FUTURE DONATIONS TO OUR WORLD CUP JOURNEY, PLEASE CONTACT chagosfa2013@gmail.com **
THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM
Every football lover dreams of representing their nation at a
World Cup, but for us, the Chagos Islands national football team, it has always
been an impossible dream. Until now...
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FROM CHAGOS TO CRAWLEY
We play our football in Crawley, near London, where our Chagossian community has been in exile since it was forcibly evicted from our Indian Ocean homeland in 1966. The British government sold the island of Diego Garcia to the US for a new military air base.
Thousands of miles away from our ancestral home, our community continues to fight to be allowed to return to our islands and we proudly maintain our unique identity in Crawley - through language, song, culture… and football.
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10,000 MILE ROAD TO THE WORLD CUP
Football is a huge passion for our community and we are immensely proud that our national football team has qualified for a World Cup – the CONIFA World Cup. The tournament in May gives non-FIFA and exiled nations like Chagos the opportunity to play international football.
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A fortnight before the multi-millionaire superstars of world football compete at Euro 2016, teams from all over the world from Kurdistan to Somaliland will fly their flags in Abkhazia, near Georgia. We will all play simply for the love of the game and the pride of
representing our people. From Chagos to Crawley to Abkhazia - a 10,000
mile road to the World Cup.
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WHY WE NEED YOUR HELP
The major obstacle standing between us and our golden opportunity to represent our national identity on the world stage is finding the money to buy the team their plane tickets to Abkhazia.
Our team, like any other amateur side, operate on a miniscule budget, which means the vast majority of our World Cup adventure will need to be funded by fundraising and indeed from the pockets of players and coaches.
As it stands, it is
touch-and-go on whether we will be able to field a full starting XI in
Abkhazia.
Our
aim is to send as many Chagos team and coaching staff members as possible to
the World Cup - the people who have worked so hard to reach a once in a
lifetime World Cup.
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£3,000 - the figure that Cristiano Ronaldo earns every two hours - will help to fulfil the impossible dream of many more team members. It will also help Chagos take a team big and strong enough to have a chance to win the cup.
CHEER CHAGOS
In the words of talismanic Chagos midfielder Ricky Louis:
"We cannot return to our islands but we can return a trophy to our community. We can do it for Chagos and for Crawley. And we can do it together. Cheer Chagos!"
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Members of Crawley public show their support for the campaign
FIND OUT MORE
- For regular updates on our campaign follow @cheerchagos on Twitter and https://www.facebook.com/cheerchagos on Facebook
- Articles about the Cheer Chagos campaign:
> Sport360 http://bit.ly/1ZGn1FD
> A Football Report http://bit.ly/1TMTZUB
- To learn more about the history of the Chagos plight, visit: http://chagosrefugeesgroup.org
- If you are business and would like to sponsor Chagos during the World Cup, please contact chagosfa2013@gmail.com
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Campaign video credits:
- Chagos team footage on bus and match preparation -
courtesy of Clin d’oeil films. The Chagos Team will be covered in the feature
length film Fields of Hope by Olivier Magis, produced by Clin d’oeil films.
-
Chagos Islands modern day footage - copyright Aline Escalon. See the full
'Fabled Chagos Islands' video here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dReLt...
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Chagos goal footage courtesy of Panjab FC.
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Cheer Chagos logo and map location animation by Patrick Cullinan (@pcull1nan )
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Chagos archive footage. Copyright: 'Stealing A Nation'