The real countdown to the World Cup has begun. On June 11, nations around the world will temporarily lose their minds as commentators keep us entertained with their idiosyncratic football humour. Some of us will cry into our beers, some will high-five, at nation-themed restaurants around the country. Politicians will suddenly discover sport and use it to preach their own ideological messages — hopefully peace and unity. Somewhere, a teenager with excellent hair and even better tattoos will become worth more than a small country’s GDP.
But for all the billions spent, the endless sponsorships and the industrial-scale machinery surrounding modern football, the game itself remains really simple. Two goalposts, one ball, a patch of ground, willing participants — children with enough imagination to turn a dusty yard into a stadium.
It’s this version of football that Joburg photographer Clint Strydom has spent years documenting in his photographic series, The Real Heroes, currently showing at The Melrose Gallery.
It’s great timing. As the 2026 Fifa World Cup unfolds across North America, drawing the world’s attention to elite athletes and global spectacle, Strydom’s images redirect our gaze towards township streets, beaches, dusty open fields and improvised pitches where children play football for joy, not money.
Strydom, born in Joburg in 1973 and raised on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast, has built a career photographing the emotional atmosphere surrounding a subject rather than the subject itself. His images often are more visual memories or art than they are works of documentary. Light hangs heavily, movement lingers and the frame contains many moments simultaneously.
It’s a style that’s earned him international recognition and exhibitions from Chicago to Miami, while collaborations with organisations including Fifa, Aston Martin and the Mexican Football Hall of Fame have further broadened his reach. Despite this global profile, his strongest work is still rooted in South African experience.
The children who populate the photographs in The Real Heroes series won’t appear on a Fifa poster. Their fields are uneven, their equipment is worn. Goalposts are made from whatever’s available: rocks, sticks, discarded objects. But the intensity of the play is reflected in the photographs.
In one image, a cluster of boys chase a ball through clouds of dust, their bodies suspended between effort and flight. In another, players are dwarfed by landscape and sky, transforming a casual kickabout into art.
The exhibition sits comfortably within Strydom’s broader body of work. Whether documenting Joburg’s urban energy in his Big City Life series or exploring forgotten histories in Hidden Shadows & Silent Voices, he consistently gravitates towards peripheral spaces and overlooked narratives. He seems drawn to people and places operating outside the frame of mainstream attention.
Football’s grassroots culture provides fertile ground for exactly his kind of observation. The game’s emotional centre belongs to the millions who play without contracts, endorsements or television audiences. The children kicking a ball until sunset, friends arguing over penalties, communities gathering around a shared obsession ... and fun.
While the World Cup celebrates football at its most commercialised, The Real Heroes celebrates football in its purest form. Strydom’s photographs make a persuasive argument that the soul of the game still belongs to the children.
First published in Sunday Times Lifestyle.
