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PARIS - Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger hopes his role as organizing committee president for next year's Homeless World Cup in Paris raises awareness of those he fears are being increasingly excluded from society.
The 2011 event will take place in August, with matches to be played at the picturesque Champ de Mars near the Eiffel Tower. Wenger is being helped by former France players Lilian Thuram and Emmanuel Petit.
"We are here because we are aware that sport can help someone's life take off," Wenger said Friday in Paris. "The goal of this World Cup is to look at people who are left to one side in society and to try and help them through sport."
Wenger said he fears homelessness will increase as people are flocking away from rural areas to cities in search of work.
"We are heading more and more toward big cities of 30-40 million inhabitants in the next 10-20 years," he said. "Sport will have a very important role to play in controlling this phenomenon."
It was Petit, who played under Wenger when Arsenal won the league and cup double in 1998, who first contacted Wenger and Thuram to get them involved.
"I am always proud when my former players take up ventures that are worth the trouble," Wenger said. "I deeply believe that sport can change lives. It gives you a goal, a motivation, a discipline that can easily be lost when you're very young."
Organizers hope that 70 teams and up to 700 players will be involved, an increase on the 67 teams taking part in this year's Homeless World Cup on Rio's Copacabana beach from Sept. 19-26.
Funding for the event, which has the backing of the French Football Federation, will cost around US$2.58 million mainly to cover lodgings and transport.
Petit, who won the World Cup with France in 1998, said his interest has been heightened after witnessing homeless people being humiliated daily near his Paris apartment.
"When you are in the street, stop for five minutes and look at the homeless people and look at how nasty people are to them. It's as if people swerve one metre away from them for fear of being contaminated," Petit said. "We live in a society where people are scared of falling into poverty. There is less and less human rapport."
Wenger says Arsenal donated $900,000 this year to a charity helping homeless people in London between the ages of 15-25.
"I know the problem a little bit," he said. "In every big city that exceeds five-10 million people, you have a certain amount of young people who are homeless."
Although soccer has made Wenger, Thuram and Petit very rich, Wenger said they have not forgotten that when they first fell in love with soccer it was not for financial reasons.
"We are super privileged people in a sport that is possibly the most money-orientated in our society," he said. "But don't forget, neither I or them started to play football because of money. We played football because we love football.
"Sport was a motor in our lives to achieve something. The money came after," Wenger added. "When I started playing there was no money in football, it came a long time afterward. It was a consequence of sport."
