Everyone has ability: How football loving youth became national icons in Uganda.

The ‘bodaboda’ or moped driver dodges the incessant Kampala traffic by taking a right up Kololo Hill, one of the city’s most salubrious districts. Past guarded embassies, past high walls, past barbed wire fences, past the neatly mown lawns and garden sprinklers, it is a different world to the one he is talking me to. Reaching Mortuary Roundabout, he speeds past a row of coffin makers which flank Kampala’s main hospital, Mulago. The air returns thick with fumes and the views return to corrugated slum. Kampala, like so many African’s cities, is rife with dichotomy. The poverty is so in your face it is hard to miss while the wealth sticks out like one very sore thumb. But I am not on the lookout for poverty. Instead I’m on the hunt for positivism, and I’ve been told that I’ll get a healthy dose of it by arriving at a soccer pitch on a given Saturday afternoon in Kampala.

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The Kids League on Wikipedia

TKL was founded in 2003 by Trevor Dudley after five years of success with Kampala Kids League (Uganda) (KKL) whose talented kids have won 20 International soccer tournaments in the last eight years. They were six times Gothia Cup World Youth Cup champions, Norway Cup winners, Haarlem Cup Amsterdam) winners, seven time Tivoli Cup winners and three time winners of Football Festival in Denmark, this league is now one of the most successful of its kind in Africa.

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Uganda Kids League in exhibition match with FC Barcelona cadet team

By Miranda Eeles

BARCELONA, Spain, 2 February 2007 – Amongst the TV cameras and photographers, 16 boys from Uganda shivered in the cold and rain but waited patiently. When the moment arrived, they walked out onto the pitch in Camp Nou – the stadium of Football Club Barcelona – and the crowd roared in appreciation.

The boys appeared calm but deep inside, they said later, they could not believe what was happening to them. “I saw Ronaldinho with my naked eyes!” enthused one boy, Ali Abujeri.

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The Eye Magazine

It is a hot and dry October morning on a Saturday in Gulu Town. Crowds of children stride purposefully down the dusty roads leading to Pece Stadium. Inside the stadium, a few parents stand on the sidelines, chatting together while keeping an eye on clusters of players milling about on the pitch. Boys and girls watch each entrance to the field expectantly, awaiting any sign of arrival from The Kids League Uganda staff. With registration for TKL football and netball activities scheduled to begin at eight, the playing field is swarming by seven-thirty with young athletes eager to occupy one of the spots in the popular town league. Conversations focus on memories of the previous TKL season, with speculations about who the Most Valuable Player might have been. At the end of the day, 378 players will be selected to mark the beginning of seven fun-filled weeks of a new TKL Gulu season!

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By Ethan Zohn | Thursday, April 1, 2010 8:21 AM ET

Outside the lines of the soccer field, FC Barcelona is helping UNICEF win a battle of epic proportions.

Lovers of the beautiful game, or soccer as we call it here in the United States, have been handed a dream clash by Europe’s soccer governing body, UEFA. In the UEFA Champions League quarter-final, two of the world’s most elegant clubs, defending champions FC Barcelona and English Premiership club Arsenal squared off in a match up that thrilled fans around the world. After dominating the entire match on Wednesday, FC Barcelona let a two goal lead slip away in the final 20 minutes. The final score was a dramatic 2-2 tie. Make sure not to miss the second leg of the series on April 6 because this could be a game of epic proportions.

Read More on the Tonic Website