COMMENTARY The World Cup should dedicate Haiti's opening game to a Port-au-Prince boy who embraced soccer — the game, not the greed — as sanctuary from the gangs that killed him last month.
When Haiti takes the field Saturday night in its opening World Cup match, anyone who cares about soccer — that is, the beautiful game and not the bombastic greed it’s known for today — should look out for two players in particular:
Right-winger Louicius Deedson and midfielder Leverton Pierre.
They’ll be representing Les Grenadiers because soccer helped do for them what it was helping to do — but in the end could not do — for 12-year-old Josué St. Vilus.
Keep him alive.
READ MORE: Grenadye Alaso! World Cup win showcases Haiti's real face — not the gang face
Deedson and Pierre were raised in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Tabarre, which is controlled by the murderous gangs that all but rule Haiti today. Last November an especially brutal group, 400 Mawozo, took over Tabarre and forced 600 residents from their homes.
Days later, though, Haiti qualified for its first trip to a men’s World Cup in more than 50 years — thanks to a goal by Deedson that helped defeat Nicaragua.
Deedson and Pierre were playing for Haiti in Curaçao that night — and they play professionally in the U.S. and Portugal — in no small part because years before, soccer had shielded them from gangs like 400 Mawozo and the recruiting of minors that they’re infamous for.
Both of them had been insulated by a nonprofit soccer program for at-risk Port-au-Prince youths called FONDAPS, based in Port-au-Prince’s Cité Soleil slum, which gives them a place not just to play the game but to receive food aid and learn life skills.
Thanks to Haiti, beneath the rubble of the collapse of soccer’s soul, first responders can still find a survivor — a game that still has human meaning.
Josué St. Vilus, who was growing up in Cité Soleil’s Sarthe neighborhood, was also a FONDAPS kid, a talented goalkeeper. Until May 16, he too dreamed of someday being a pro and making the Haitian national men’s team.
But when rival gangs started a homicidal rampage through Cité Soleil that Saturday morning, Josué, his parents and three siblings had to flee their home and seek shelter through a gauntlet of gang crossfire. In the chaos, a bullet tore through Josué’s stomach, killing him.
Calm presence
Photos were texted to me that day of his corpse lying on a Sarthe sidewalk, a towel covering his wound.
They show that he was wearing his blue soccer uniform.
“As a goalie he was a calm, anchoring presence for his teammates,” FONDAPS director Patrice Millet told me from Port-au-Prince the next day.
“I feel empty,” Millet said. “I feel empty for my country.”
Even so, Josué’s family says his life was fuller precisely because soccer had become his sanctuary from gang violence. It was an Elysian escape from his childhood confines — FONDAPS youngsters often talk about hiding under their beds when gunfire erupts — just as it’s given refuge to kids like him the world over, from the East End of London to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
We don’t quite understand that facet of soccer in the U.S., because here the game at the youth level still resides for the most part in the safe, affluent, suburban Soccer Mom sphere.
But it’s why Haiti’s first World Cup appearance in more than half a century is one of this tournament’s most important stories, maybe the most important.
It’s a reminder that beneath the rubble of the collapse of modern soccer’s soul — FIFA scandals, five-figure ticket prices, obscene broadcast contracts, player salaries that exceed the GDP of South Pacific countries — first responders can still find an innocent survivor, a game that still has human meaning.
Soccer meant asylum for Deedson, Pierre and Josué St. Vilus in the neighborhoods of Haiti. And it’s been a moral rescue for the nation of Haiti amid its gang governance, first with the triumph of the Haitian women’s team in 2023 (its first-ever World Cup qualification) and now the men.
Soccer, in other words, is the latest vessel of Haitians’ trademark resilience.
You’ll find further proof of that on Friday — when FONDAPS opens a new soccer field for its kids in Cité Soleil, funded by a local private company, to replace the pitch that was hijacked by the same armed gangs that killed Josué last month.
That’s why the World Cup should dedicate Saturday’s Haiti-vs.-Scotland game in Boston — home to one of the U.S.’s largest Haitian communities — to Josué.
Even if soccer couldn’t save him, recognizing the salvation he saw in it might be one small step toward saving the sport.
