I arrived at the World Street Football Championships during a moment of raggedy beauty.
A Brazilian with an oversized replica shirt that drooped past his upper thighs pickpocketed his Argentinian opponent before, to the accelerating pleasure of a commentator rattling away in machine-gun Spanish, nutmegging the keeper.
"Gol! Gol! Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!"
The crowd, about 1,500 or so, stood up and hollered. I ended up so transfixed I stayed until dusk fell and the last ball of day two was kicked.
This is street football with a twist. All of the 22 teams competing in this week-long, Fifa-sanctioned tournament represent projects that use football as an antidote to violence, drugs or intolerance, or for social development.
There's a combined Israeli-Palestinian team, for instance, as well as a Rwandan side made up of Hutus and Tutsis. In both cases, football is used to reconcile, and to break down bloodied barriers.
But every team has a story, and I was humbled to hear many of them.
Like that of the Colombia side, drawn from the 'Football for Peace' project which dives headfirst into the worst areas of Bogotá and reclaims squares for football. Only those without weapons or drugs are allowed to play.
Or that of the Senegal squad - all shiny smiles and freshly-ironed shirts - who are represented by the Diambars academy in Dakar, set up by Patrick Vieira and others to help orphans and homeless children get an education.
The England team, meanwhile, is made up of players from Street League London http://www.streetleague.co.uk, a charity that takes football to the homeless, former drug addicts and the socially disadvantaged.
"We do outreach with all sorts of people, but usually asylum seekers, the homeless, the hard-up, those on parole or at risk of offending," explains assistant coach Sean Higgins. "We put up posters inviting people for free training and it goes from there. Often it makes a real difference to their lives, because social outcasts often have nothing to look forward to."
The Street League London project is funded by the Football Foundation, local boroughs and the national lottery. "But a charity like ours can always do with more," Sean admits.
Everyone I spoke to said much the same thing. For a sport wallowing in so much easy money, the trickle-down effect is desperately slow.
The same can't be said for the street football. It's five-a-side, played to a high standard on a 30m pitch surrounded by scaffolding that seats 2,200 people. It was fast, furious and mostly fair: there is no on-pitch referee - players hold their hands up to appeal against a decision. Only when they can't agree among themselves does an adjudicator intervene. It was remarkable how well this self-policing worked - although sometimes with 30 seconds to go a player would be scythed down and, amid the apologies, the clock would run out. Some things never change.
Still, afterwards there were always handshakes and hugs. "The atmosphere is fantastic and overwhelming," Sean told me. "You've got hundreds of different guys from different continents and they're all staying and mixing together in the same accommodation centre. Coaches and organisers too. We're all learning from each other."
This is football making a difference. Hearing how people in the poorest favelas in Brazil or Kenyans from drought-ridden slums have had their lives changed by this mix of football and education was both humbling and life-affirming. You only wish these organisations were better known, and better supported too.
For more information about the Street Football World Festival visit their websites here and here.
