Football is a game of wits that takes 90 minutes and move participants to tears of agony and triumph in equal measure. 

While the fans show adrenaline and express their passions in differing affiliations; it is not a contestable fact to say that the game of football embeds peace and helps the youth to find bearing in society. 

Nelson Onarata, a footballer player and a student from Juba Commercial Secondary School is a living testimony of the turnaround that the game can offer in life: sowing peace and preoccupying the mind with good thoughts.

“Football is peace, love, and unity. It makes us work together and for the team not considering who you are or where you come from. In football we mean discipline and make us friendly to each other,” says Onarata. 

He is part of the team that recently clinched the Inter-School Championship trophy and they continue to depict the elements of harmony brought by the game especially in a conflict-prone country.

To Onarata and his colleagues, sports remain an underrated tool that can change the mentality of young people in South Sudan.

Changed for the better

According to the 23-year-old, if someone was to rewind the time, a few years ago, a time like now, he was sucked into the criminal elements that abused drugs and planned attacks on innocent people. But this is past him now. 

“I would have not been like [this] today if it was not football. I thank myself for choosing football in my life, I almost joined the wrong group because of idleness but when my friends introduced me to the football game; it helped me to be like today,” he narrates.

He adds that playing football saved him from bad activities such as stealing, drinking a lot of alcohol, and smoking. 

He appeals to the government and private sectors to invest more in sports especially football to foster peace.

He also urges school authorities to introduce yearly inter-school competitions across the country to encourage young ones to continue with their learnings.

“We want where all the schools in the country will be involved including other sports like volleyball, basketball, athletics, and others,” he says. 

With him is his 16-year-old teammate Dominic Odong Felix who is also grateful for being part of the sports. 

“Let me take this opportunity to thank our school administration for supporting our morals and material not forgetting my teammates for us to lift the cup, I can say we are the best and I am happy for winning it for my school,” he said this after Juba Commercial lifted the trophy last earlier this week. 

Felix started playing football in 2017 when the country was suffering from serious conflicts which left many young people traumatized.

“It was football which made me and my colleagues have hope that we are together and we are working together and we believe that peace will be there one day,” he expresses.

“In short what I mean here is that with football, we will have hope in achieving what we are hoping for, one of it was peace.”

Felix plays as a winger and is developing the clamour to boss defenders in the game. He says this transcends an individual talent and it can be a pathway to realizing peace.

 “As we talk today, not only me but it has changed many lives of my colleagues in schools and my areas,” he reveals. 

New leaf

“I have my friends who were confused before but now they are back to their normal senses, they have abandoned the criminal activities like nigga groups and even drinking of alcohol and smoking,” he discloses.

He all reveals that through his advice to his colleagues, they are now back to school and playing football.

A youngster further appeals to the young people in the country to try football as a tool of promoting their talents as well as achieving unity. 

‘‘They said sports can open so many doors to other opportunities in ones’ life,’’ he says. 

On his part, Musa Nyarisuk a senior three student and player of the same school; football is all about believing and teamwork.

“We are united and we work together so thanks to all of us,” Nyarisuk said after the win.

That this was their maiden participation and subsequent clinching of the trophy since joining Juba Commercial Secondary School in 2019 was a great fete.  

“We worked hard for it, now we won it and it was because we believe in ourselves and we have been saying that we must bring it here,” he said.   

Nyarisuk emphasizes the gospel of using sports to achieve peace just like his teammates. To him, gracing the game not ‘‘only makes you friends but gives you peace in the neighborhood’’.

“Through football, you can be loved, and you see everyone as friends and you will not have any enemies,” he says. 

“For instance, in Juba, when you involve yourself in criminal activities, you will be forced to avoid some of the places where you have enemies and this is the advantage of those groups.”

He further says that football teaches people respect and trims the volume of insults. 

He calls on the colleagues who are out of the school to rejoin school to continue with their studies saying it is always not too late for anyone to change from bad behaviours.

“For me, football teaches me discipline, to work hard, and to work with different people,” he says.