“For two hours, there’s only football”
Nikita at the Oslo 2025 Homeless World Cup (holding his country’s team sign).
Image: Donnie Nicholson
Gift a Seat This Christmas
This festive season, we’re celebrating the heart of the Homeless World Cup: the 500 players from the Oslo 2025 Homeless World Cup whose courage, resilience and joy in August of this year, continue to inspire us every single day.
From the 13th December until the 24th December, we’re sharing The 12 Stories of Oslo 2025, a journey through uplifting, powerful accounts from the 20th edition of the Homeless World Cup which was held in Norway’s capital city this August.
meet nikita
Lithuania is one of the quieter achievers of the Oslo 2025 tournament. The country is also one of the longest-serving Member Countries of the Homeless World Cup Foundation network.
Having made their debut at the tournament in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2006, Lithuania has been a tournament staple at the Homeless World Cup ever since.
The team, facilitated by FK Feniksas (FC Phoenix) run by Stasys Pranevicius and Giedrius Lubas and features players who have experienced alcohol addiction and our in reduction.
(There was a 54-minute documentary made about the team and program back in 2010 entitled Alco Football, with alco short for alcohol. It’s a clue to the underpinning elements the program seeks to address.)
Nikita Voitechovskij is one of the players in Oslo continuing Lithuania’s long tradition, representing the quiet-achieving team in green and gold. When we spoke, the team had just played their final match of the tournament, perhaps fittingly against geographical neighbours Bulgaria.
Lithuania finished in third place in the City of Oslo Cup (the second tier competition at this year’s tournament), just shy of South and Central American heavyweights Costa Rica and Brazil; Bulgaria finished in fourth place.)
“In this tournament, we are friends. Outside of it, not so much,” Nikita smiles of the cross-country rivalry with Bulgaria. Within the team, he says, “We are all like a family.”
That isn’t an exaggeration. The Lithuanian program is successful and long-running, with all of the players from the 2006 team all still alive and all still sober. Many of the players from that and subsequent teams travel annually to support the current year’s players and reconnect with the tournament that helped cement their own sobriety. They’re all still involved in the local life-changing football program.
Nikita likewise credits playing football with FK Feniksas and at the Homeless World Cup with helping him keep his mind off drinking and using.
When he goes to football, he says, “for two hours in my head, there’s only football, only football. I then come home relax, and for me, it’s a good way not to use drugs or alcohol.” He’s been clean for one year and eight months.
It’s a huge accomplishment, and he has a support network and sobriety length to aspire to. Some of the former Lithuanian players have been clean for approaching 20 years, something Nikita acknowledges gives hope as to where he can go and what he can be. For now, he’s focusing on one day at a time, attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings at home and here at the tournament. And turning up to play football, one training, one match—two hours of focus—at a time.
Gift a Seat This Christmas
Words by Fiona Crawford