Football / News

Football coach nominated for BBC Unsung Hero Award

By Emily Brewster  Monday Dec 11, 2023

The founder of a group that provides young people from underprivileged areas across Bristol access to sports has been nominated for a BBC Sports Personality of the Year Unsung Hero Award.

Hamsa Hassan founded Nextgen Circle in 2019 as an 11-a-side football team after finding that his own friendship group was beginning to drift apart due to a lack of places for them to meet and play sport.

The organisation now runs four sports programmes and a football team, Pheonix NextGen FC, for young people from six to 18 years, giving more than 150 people a week access to an empowering community and positive use of free time.

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Nextgen Circle has gone on to train young people in football coaching, with six students having successfully completed the Coach Up programme so far.

Hamsa Hassan founded Nextgen Circle in 2019 after seeing a need in his community – photo: NextGen Circle

Hamsa told Bristol24/7: “We wanted to build a certain culture within our organisation – heart. Trying to make sure we all look after each other.”

NextGen Circle sports club welcomes all children for free, every week, come rain or shine.

Hamsa, 27, who was born and raised in St Paul’s, explains that, through football, the NextGen Circle programmes instill the values of respect, pride and growth in the members’ wider lives.

“We want to be a lot more that a football club,” says Hamsa, who has a number of ambitions to help young people with education and career aspirations.

Having run the community group for five years, Hamsa says he finds his passion to run the programme from “the people that I work with, the people that are part of our community”.

The overall winner for the Unsung Hero Award 2023 at the 70th annual BBC Sports Personality of the Year will be announced on December 19.

All photos: NextGen Circle

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