Maeve Bidonde, Staff Writer
South Sudan, the newest country in the world has recently made headlines for its Blind Premier League for Soccer or as other countries in the world call the sport, Football. A non-governmental organization in South Sudan backs the league itself called Light for the World, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, and Uganda. The organization has been working towards disability rights and inclusion within those countries. One young man who captains the competition’s Kator Blind Football Club, never even thought playing blind soccer was a possibility until he was introduced to it. His name is Jimmy Just Augustin and he went blind in 2012. According to CNN Augustin had experienced some pain in both of his eyes as a child but a village doctor told him he was fine and nothing was wrong. It took some time but he was finally able to see a doctor in Juba at that point the damage to his retinas was done and irreparable. Augustine was blind and forced to give up on soccer.
In 2020 he discovered the blind format and was nicknamed “Messi” on the team. He even interviewed with CNN Sports. “I’m very happy with this experience because I never thought that I would play football again … I was thinking that I can never play any kind of sport again,” he said, speaking to CNN Sport. “With disability, you can think, ‘I’m nothing, I don’t have something to do now, I’m useless.’ But currently, the activity is there, the (opportunity) to dribble the ball is there.” This league is giving others who are blind a chance to play a sport they wouldn’t otherwise be able to play and get more out of the sport itself. The rules of blind soccer are different from regular soccer and accommodations have been made to the equipment used in soccer to make it more accessible for the players.
As for the rules the teams have five players on the field at a time, four outfielders, and a goalie. To qualify to play you must be classified as “completely blind” meaning that you must have “very low visual acuity and/or no light perception” according to CNN. They also wear eye masks or eye shades to make it so light perception is completely even. However, the goalkeepers are allowed sighted or partially sighted and need to stay in the restricted area around the goal. The goalkeepers provide necessary information to the outfielders. As for the ball it has sewn in rattles to allow the players to be able to hear and locate the ball on the field.
Spectators at the games are required to keep silent to help facilitate the easy location of the ball. The ball is a size three which is smaller than the size five typically used in soccer. The field which is 40m x 20m is walled in to prevent the ball from going out of bounds making a faster-paced game. Players shout “voy” or “I’m going” which is a nod to soccer’s Iberian roots to let opponents know they are going in for a tackle. They do this so opponents prepare for impact and to minimize the amount of injuries in a game. The teams have two other guides to help at the halfway mark and behind the goal the team is attacking. The International Blind Sports Association (IBSA) recognized blind soccer as an official sport in 1996 and men’s blind soccer has been around since 2004. Sophia Mohammed who is the director of Light for the World in South Sudan spoke with Forbes magazine saying “The main challenge people with disabilities face is the denial of their human rights due to lack of awareness towards disability inclusion,” Blind Soccer has given new opportunities for accessibility in sports for those who are blind or who have degenerative vision conditions such as Retinitis Pigmentosa.
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