Football Roots: The Spirit of the Game

Before the stadiums, the floodlights, and the roaring crowds, there was a street, a ball, and a child with a dream. Football is not born in glory. It is born in dust and freedom, in impromptu games played without shoes or goalposts, in neighborhoods where the game is the great equalizer, belonging equally to everyone and to no one.

For Football Roots: The Spirit of the Game, photographer Sam Robles spent a decade traversing eighteen countries, from Brazil and Ghana to Morocco, Nepal, and beyond, to document the rawest expression of the sport. Gaining the trust of children in hidden and sometimes dangerous communities, often without speaking their language, Robles let football do the talking. The result is a body of work of rare tenderness and universality, capturing the joy, grit, and pure love of the game at its most elemental.