A new football team is taking root in the all-too-often frozen soil of Minnesota. While the land of a thousand lakes is home to major NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL franchises, the beautiful game is one of its growing industries. Minnesotans of every color and creed can be found kicking around in the spring, summer, and fall, turning to the indoor game when the snowy, constantly below freezing winter arrives. Away from the spotlight of MLS which encircles Minnesota United, the state of Minnesota is also home to a wide variety of academy, amateur, and recreational teams who are using the game to change lives and make memories.
Perhaps one of the most unique of these sides is not a singular club at all, but a national team-featuring association rooted in the capital of Saint Paul itself. This is the Karen Football Association, a national team looking to represent one of Minnesota’s newest communities. Despite resistance and obstacles at every turn, this team seems set to make history far beyond the borders of one state or one country.
As their name suggests, the Karen Football Association is a body of coaches and organizers who seek to create avenues for Karen footballers. The association’s biggest operations are its women’s and men’s national teams.
These national teams, composed of Karen athletes, seek to represent the Southeast Asian-originating ethnicity as members of the Confederation of Independent Football Associations or CONIFA. While both Myanmar and Thailand, the two nations with the most Karen residents globally, have FIFA-recognized national teams, the Twin Cities-based association seeks to provide a team just for the Karen people. While said team may end up being based in the largely rural state of Minnesota, known for its forests and farms as much as its cities, their hope is to provide a home for a global population.
The Karen people are already far more complicated than a blanket group of people, full of diversity, individuality and variation, and their history is one stemmed in conflict and still-unresolved obstacles.