Harri Stevens used to lose his temper on a football pitch. At 12, in a clip Swansea City AFC Foundation has just put out, he says it himself: “Before I started going Kicks, I was like naughty when I was out. But since I’ve gone there, like, I’ve just been behaving.”
This spring, at 16, he walked out in a Wales shirt at the Street Child World Cup in Mexico City. The Foundation has now told his story in full.
The Tuesday-night football that turned into something else
Harri started at the Foundation’s free Premier League Kicks sessions, the drop-in football the club’s charity runs for young people in parts of the city where organised sport is thin on the ground. The Foundation says managing his behaviour and emotions had been difficult before that, and that anger in particular got the better of him, on the pitch as much as off it.
What he found, it says, was somewhere to play with his mates, adults he trusted and, over time, a different way of handling himself. The relationships with youth engagement manager Craig Richards and the coaches were the thing that stuck.
Harri’s own view now is blunt. “If I weren’t going there, I think I’d be causing trouble all the time,” he says. “I’ve grown up more. I’ve behaved more.”
Local Legend at 12
Two years in, in 2022, the Foundation named him its Premier League Kicks Local Legend, an award for attitude, love of the game and how far a young person has come away from football as much as on it. He is photographed holding the certificate in a green bib, all of 12.
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Then Mexico
In May ten young people from the Foundation’s Kicks sites in Llanelli and Blaenymaes flew to Mexico City as the first team to represent Wales at the Street Child World Cup, and came fifth. They had spent 18 months volunteering and fundraising to pay for it. Harri was one of them.
He went with one of his closest friends, who says on the video that the pick made him proud: “That’s a really good achievement for him.” Harri’s own review of Mexico City is a 16-year-old’s: “It was a good laugh with all the boys. We done good in the tournament as well. The Brazil team loved us.”
Craig Richards, the Foundation’s youth engagement manager, says the change was visible on arrival: “First day, he’s happy. He felt free. You could see it in him. Tried new stuff.” He adds that Harri was picked “just for his incredible journey” with the Foundation.
The tournament, run by Street Child United, mixes football with art workshops and a young people’s congress on rights and stigma; players spend as much time speaking as playing. For Harri, the Foundation says, being picked to represent his country gave him something to hold onto, and a reason to keep the progress going.
“We feel the Premier League Kicks sessions that he attended on a weekly basis have helped him to overcome his behaviour and anger issues,” Mr Richards says. “Opportunities like the Premier League Kicks Cup and Mexico has kept Harri out of trouble.”
What the Foundation says it proves
The Foundation’s point in telling the story is that none of it happened fast. Four years of turning up, the same coaches, and a trip that only existed because the players raised the money themselves.
“Kicks gave Harri somewhere to start,” it says. “The people around him helped him keep moving forward; and Mexico showed just how far that journey could take him.”
Premier League Kicks is funded by the Premier League and run through club charities across England and Wales. Swansea City’s Foundation runs sessions across the city and in Llanelli, free to attend, for anyone aged eight to 18.
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