Search Your Team: Making dreams come true

This project has given a voice and a direction to those who felt their life was going nowhere, to those who looked for a purpose.

Search Your Team (French Sport Tryouts) helps young people get started in life by supporting them in getting enrolled in a University or Higher Education Institution and/or getting started in a career in soccer.

Search Your Team follows an inclusive approach, understanding that young people from disfavoured backgrounds or from families of immigrants may need some extra support in socio-professional integration. It is not selling dreams, it is making them come true. How many young people would love to follow a career in soccer? Well, that is exactly whatit helps them achieve.

How does it work?
Those applying contact Search Your Team and fill in a form with their details, stating which career they wish to follow in the area of sport, Search Your Team then provides assistance for them to get a grant or scholarship at an American University. Right now, the programme intends to be included in the French Regional Youth Insertion Plan.


The idea is to make courses and sports careers at an American University available to all, especially those who did not have access to such an opportunity.


Search Your Team helps applicants in editing, for free, their soccer presentation videos, where they are filmed showing their soccer skills and it supports the applicants in getting a trial with a professional soccer club in Europe. It also helps with visa requirements.


All the applicant has to do is to provide a soccer video and Search Your Team supports them from then on. How many young people send an email to a soccer club, which is never even opened?

When the Soccer Highlight Recruiting Video has been sent to Search Your Team and edited, the aspiring soccer player has a digital soccer profile and Search Your Team uses its own network of clubs and coaches to make sure that the youngster is properly looked after, protecting them from fake opportunities and human trafficking. How many fall into a trap and end up working in a factory in virtual slavery? All virtual soccer profiles are sent to the network of professional and semi-professional sports clubs and Colleges to help them get a place as a soccer player or else take a college degree at a University of reference in the USA.

Higher motives
Search Your Team points out that many young people would love to become another success story like Mbappé, Dembélé, Eto’o, Pogba, Mané, Drogba...but these are very much the exceptions in a world in which the dream can easily turn into a nightmare in which human trafficking rears its ugly head and abuses those aspiring to a better future in Europe.


The story so far
Many candidates have been placed at American Universities, some with full scholarships and Search Your Team is looking to widen its activities through the United Nations Organization and at the country level to reach a greater number of youths and help them fulfil their dreams.

An example of selflessness and solidarity, helping others and protecting them, creating career opportunities for those who would not otherwise have a chance.


Author`s name
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey