"In Rio de Janeiro, the Russian national team starts every match with a strong winning attitude. There are different ways of people getting into distress, but the thing that unites everybody who came here is the desire not to be a loser," Arkady Tyurin, Russian team’s leader, said.

Russia is known as a powerhouse of homeless football, having grabbed the World Championship title in 2006 and reaching the finals two years later.

The UEFA-backed tournament is aimed to represent a lifetime opportunity for homeless and excluded people from more than 60 nations from all around the globe.

According to the statistics, more than 70 per cent of the participants of previous homeless championships were subsequently able to normalize their social status, and one of the players – Bebe of Portugal – even signed a contract with Manchester United.