STOCKHOLM, Sweden-- When the 15-year-old Remezan Qizil started a mostly Kurdish football club in the Swedish city of Örebro in 2004, his ambitions were relatively modest and hardly far-reaching.
"I just wanted to connect to my heritage and celebrate my Kurdish identity through sports," says Qizil, now 27 and manager of the Dal Kurd football club in Sweden.
Qizil and eight other Kurdish teenagers founded the club in a country with over 100,000 Kurdish residents and hoped it would soon attract sponsors and enthusiastic footballers.
The team started at the bottom of the Swedish league pyramid, but after continued annual successes, the Dal Kurd is now playing at the top level and hoping to enter the ultimate level, the Swedish professional league, Allsvenskan.
"I just wanted to connect to my heritage and celebrate my Kurdish identity through sports," says Qizil, now 27 and manager of the Dal Kurd football club in Sweden.
Qizil and eight other Kurdish teenagers founded the club in a country with over 100,000 Kurdish residents and hoped it would soon attract sponsors and enthusiastic footballers.
The team started at the bottom of the Swedish league pyramid, but after continued annual successes, the Dal Kurd is now playing at the top level and hoping to enter the ultimate level, the Swedish professional league, Allsvenskan.
"It will be a dream come true to enter the Allsvenskan and I think our players deserve the chance," Qizil says. "But we certainly need better sponsorship to continue into the fully professional level," he says as most players would then need financial support to dedicate themselves full time.
The club has been funded by local sponsors in addition to an annual $10,000 budget granted from the Örebro municipality.
"We have also some sort of funding from the Swedish football association, but it does hardly cover our costs," Qizil says.
He says many Kurdish families have already helped them financially.
The Dal Kurd football club was mostly Kurdish when it was initially established, but as it entered superior levels, it attracted professional players from other nationalities. Today some 14 different nationalities play in the club which has over 340 players in different levels.
The club is planning to establish three academies for training young athletes in both Sweden and Kurdistan Region.
"It is almost surreal that we have so many fans," says Qizil about their devoted spectators who travel with the team to support them in their matches.
"We are often accompanied by some 5,000 fans who cheer us and it's really beyond any of our previous expectations," he says
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