What it takes to form a football team: An immigrant story

THE MAKESHIFT tent on the edge of the playing field at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, a sprawling public park in New York’s Queens borough, is blaring the Latino chartbuster DTMF by the Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny.

A few teenage players tap their feet to its tunes, their gaze fixed on a game of football in the middle. A volley from 20 yards clangs onto the crossbar, and coach Vincent Cordoba, a stern-looking elderly Colombian man with small, sharp eyes, throws a water bottle to the ground in anger. He shouts expletives in Spanish and instructs his players to tighten up their defence and fall back in numbers.