The Liberi Nantes Football Club is Italy’s first professional soccer team made up entirely of refugees.
The team’s name, Liberi Nantes, comes from a verse in Book I of the “Aeneid” by Virgil. The exiled Trojans, fleeing their burning city, had shipwrecked and only a few of them (rari nantes) immersed in the vast sea (in gurgite vasto) reached shore. The Trojans were refugees, too, forced to flee a war, and, like the players of the Liberi Nantes, they crossed the Mediterranean in search of a place to start life anew.
They will be competing for the championship in the Italian soccer league’s third division. The 25-man squad is made up of players from the world’s trouble spots: Afghanistan, Eritrea, Guinea, Iraq, Nigeria, Sudan, Togo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The players will never have their real names and pictures on trading cards because the authorities in their home countries believe they are dead – and if they knew the truth, their families would be in grave danger.Because their asylum claims are in doubt, they cannot be registered and get a contract. Most of them are recent arrivals, live in welcoming centres for refugees and are dependent on the welfare services that Rome provides.More here and here..