Share your football/soccer story

I was recently contacted by a woman involved with a project entitled Everyone Has A Good Football Story, which will be published by Café Diverso, multi-media travel publisher based in Barcelona, Spain, in time for the 2006 World Cup. She sent me the following email, the excerpts below being republished with permission:

Café Diverso represents a new generation of travel publishing, exploring peoples and cultures through stories and photographs. We offer a forum for cultures to connect, communicate and interact creatively, and publish the works of emerging artists and writers, because we believe that “everyone has a good story”.

We are currently compiling a book to coincide with the 2006 World Cup in Germany, which will contain short stories and images from each of the 32 nations that will be competing. Everyone Has A Good Football Story is aimed to be a celebration of the cultural diversity of the participants, rather than a football book. We are looking for stories or articles of participating countries' unique culture, and experiences of living in these countries, through the theme of football. The book will be published worldwide and in different languages and contributors will earn royalties based on book sales. We provide an opportunity for emerging talents to be published alongside established authors. We contribute 1 euro from each book sale to UNESCO-endorsed literary programmes.

We are still looking for stories/articles from the competing African Nations - Angola, Ghana, Tunisia, Togo and Ivory Coast. The stories should provide readers ith a uniqe insight into the author's people and culture (or the people and culture the author is writing about). We are seeking short stories (700-1,800 words) that are personal, entertaining and that contain suspense, humour and/or sadness. We are looking for emotions and true-life characters that will grab readers' attention and arouse curiosity.

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We are also looking for images (photographs, illustrations, drawings, sketches) based on the theme of football, so if you have any suggestions or contacts, they will be very welcome.

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If you need any further information, please do not hesitate to contact me, and please also take a look at our website www.cafediverso.com.

Unfortunately we have a very tight deadline and will require stories/articles by 15 February at the latest as the book is being published in time for the 2006 World Cup, so I would appreciate any feedback.

Thank you in advance.

Best wishes,

Bridget Vranckx
brydie_v@yahoo.co.uk

You may contact Bridget at the email address listed above, but as she mentioned, the deadline is 15 Feb. And please remember that the story must in some way involve one of the five African teams participating in the 2006 World Cup: Tunisia, Togo, Angola, Ivory Coast and Ghana.