ABSTRACT
The role claimed for sport by bodies, including the two biggest and most prominent ones in the world, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), is that it is meant to bring people together. Both organisations claim that through sport they want to contribute to the planet’s future as they claim they can help ‘build a better world’ (listed on the IOC website as of 20 March 2013) or that they are ‘building a better future’ (listed on the FIFA website as of 20 March 2013). FIFA, for example, promote an anti-racism campaign as well as their ‘football for hope’ one. This campaign ‘supports programmes all over the world that combine football and social development’ (listed on the FIFA website as of 20 March 2013). The programmes include support for social integration, antidiscrimination and peace building in a variety of countries in every continent (listed on the FIFA website as of 20 March 2013).1 How then does this social role that is claimed for sport by the two biggest and most powerful organisations in the world translate onto the ground in Cyprus and help bring together people from the two communities who had been cut-off from one another for more than a generation.
