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What Role Does Football Play In The First World War

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In January 2012 the Flanders Peace Field Project was set up to promote international football and peace. The Peace Village and Open Stadium in Messines, Belgium, joined together to create a football tournament for national youth teams which concludes with a remembrance of the truce with football stars from around the globe. The project is part of a sustainable project on peace education which promotes football as a ‘positive peace message to young people’ portraying the truce as a ‘day of hope in a horrific war.’ As part of this project, the National Children’s Football Alliance promoted sharing education and best practice through playing football. They encouraged schools to commemorate the truce, aiming to teach how ‘sport can transcend conflict …show more content…

Schools and football clubs were invited to join in a ‘mass-participation’ and 7,000 events were held across to UK, with more than 30,000 schools sent education packs to inform the younger generation about the role of football in the First World War. The UK Sports Minister Helen Grant commends the Premier League’s generosity which ‘use[d] football to help forge lasting links and bonds of friendship as we come together to remember.’ Teams from British and German armies also commemorated the truce in a centenary game in December 2014 at Aldershots town stadium and the UEFA unveiled a memorial to the truce in Ploegsteert, Belgium. The association’s president Michel Platini declared ‘I pay tribute to the soldiers who, 100 years ago, showed their humanity by playing football together, opening an important chapter in European unity and providing a lasting example to young people.’ The truce was also commemorated by the National Football Museum, which opened ‘The Greater Game – Football and the First world War’ in December 2014 and Football Remembers financed a memorial for the truce that was unveiled by the Duke of Cambridge at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. The Duke of Cambridge describes how ‘football had the power to bring people together and break down barriers. It is vital that 100 years on we keep the Christmas truce story alive. The memorial will ensure that in the future, football and the nation will remember the truce (CHECK QUOTE).’ Football has come to symbolise fraternity during conflict and give hope for a more sustained peace in the

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