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Super Eagles defender, Olubayo Adefemi has declared support for Nigeria’s team to this year’s Homeless World Cup.

The ninth edition
of the tournament, which has been held annually since 2003, comes up in
Paris, France from August 21-28, 2011, and the Skoda Xanthi of Greece
right back has joined the likes of Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, Cote
d’Ivoire and Chelsea striker Didier Drogba and 1998 World Cup winners,
Lillian Thuram and Emmanuel Petit in supporting the Homeless World Cup
movement.

Adefemi, who
previously accepted to work for Search and Groom youth for development
centre – the official selectors of Nigeria’s national street football
team – as an ambassador, made this disclosure in an e-mail to Yomi
Kuku, the Search and Groom’s Executive Director.

In his statement,
Adefemi said he believes that with his penchant for youth and community
development, his support will help in fund-raising activities to
support the Nigerian team ahead of the World Cup where they will
compete against 47 other nations for the top prize.

They include host
nation France, defending champions Brazil, two-time winners Italy,
Ghana and South Africa with matches coming up at the Champs-de-Mars, in
the shadow of the Eiffel tower in Paris.

Gratitude

Adefemi expressed
his gratitude for being considered to be a part of this attempt to use
football in addressing social issues in Nigeria and promised to be
personally involved before, during and after the Paris 2011 Homeless
World Cup.

“I was involved in
charity work while playing in Israel for Hapoel Tel-Aviv. This is
another call to service,” Adefemi said. “I look forward to the ground
breaking achievements your organization and I will experience.”

Adefemi also
congratulated the Nigerian team and players to previous editions of the
Homeless World Cup for putting up good performances on and off the
pitch.

Adefemi’s schedule
as an ambassador of Search and Groom includes participating in
community projects, as well as child and gender related programmes to
be implemented in Nigeria. He will also pay a minimum of two visits
annually to project sites.

Nigeria will be
making a fourth appearance at the Homeless World Cup with the team’s
best performance coming at the 2009 tournament in Milan, Italy where
the team eventually finished fourth after losing to Brazil in the
third-place match.

In addition to the fourth-place finish, the team also got the UEFA Fair play award to cap a remarkable outing in Italy.

The Homeless World Cup promotes social integration through football
and creates fresh, inventive solutions to end homelessness and poverty
worldwide.