Delgado's legacy turns El Chota into valley of hope

Southampton striker's generosity offers new opportunities for Ecuador's youngsters

On a sandy riverbed in a dusty village in a steep sided valley high in the Andes 300 boys are playing football. There is a sense of order. Six-year-olds in red shirts stand in uncertain circles passing the ball to each other. Older boys in blue are practising their dribbling skills. On the biggest pitch the teenagers, in orange and green bibs, go through an orchestrated warm-up session before lining up for shooting practice. They are oblivious to the heavy lorries thundering across the concrete bridge above them.

The village is called El Juncal. It lies in the north of Ecuador, just off the main road between the capital, Quito, and the border with Colombia. It is one of a handful of villages in the valley of El Chota, which has a population of around 20,000. All its inhabitants, like the boys playing football, are black.

El Chota's footballers have put this tiny community on the map. Before last year Ecuador had never qualified for the World Cup finals, but they are going to Japan after finishing second in the South American qualifying group, ahead of mighty Brazil.

The boys from El Chota played a major part. The leading goalscorer, with nine, was Agustin Delgado, who is now playing for Southampton. His cousin, Kleber Chala, who has also been at St Mary's this year, was an important figure in midfield, while Ulises de la Cruz, now of Hibernian, was a key figure in defence. Other regulars included Raul Guerron and Geovany Epinoza. Indeed this isolated group of villages in El Chota may provide as many as eight of Ecuador's World Cup squad. With a further eight of the players likely to come from black communities in other parts of the country, that would mean two-thirds of the squad in a country where the black community forms only six per cent of the total population.

Blacks occupy the lowest position of all in Ecuador's social hierarchy, suffering the worst extremes of social exclusion, poverty, disease and lack of education. Many scratch a living as subsistence farmers; others come to the city in search of jobs and end up as domestic servants. Football, as in so many countries, provides a way out of the ghetto for those with enough talent.

Agustin Delgado was one. He left the valley as a teenager to ply his trade first in Guayaquil and Quito, and later in Mexico, before Southampton came calling at the end of last year. But he hasn't forgotten where he came from and the 300 boys who now train every afternoon on the dusty pitches of El Juncal owe it all to him.

The Agustin Delgado Football School was established last year, financed entirely by the Southampton striker. Facilities are basic, to put it mildly, and at the end of training the boys plunge into the nearby river to wash before lining up for dinner. The extra nutrition provided by the school is a real bonus for these children, fed in shifts on large platefuls of rice and beans in the cramped and dimly lit front room of the Delgado family home on El Juncal's main street. Diana, Agustin's sister, who is in charge of the day-to-day running of the school, makes sure that everyone gets their fair share.

But change is in the air. In the office next door, architects' plans pinned to the wall show the way forward – a new football centre, complete with showers and dining room to be erected on a patch of open scrubland. The money for this is coming from the government, $200,000 (£139,000) which Agustin Delgado procured after a meeting with the president last year; a very tangible result for El Juncal of Ecuador's World Cup qualification.

It's an investment that is long overdue. The village is otherwise a motley collection of houses built of breeze blocks on unpaved, rubbish-strewn streets, where stray dogs wander and women do their washing at large open sinks. There's a high rate of unemployment, with agriculture the main source of work. Diana remembers, as a child, standing at the side of the main road hawking vegetables to passing motorists to help her family make ends meet.

This is why they insist that all the children at the football school learn to read and write. A condition of membership for the younger ones is that they go to school in the morning. All the children, unsurprisingly, want to follow in the footsteps of their hero and benefactor, Agustin, and there's a good chance that some of them will make it, given the large number of black professional footballers in Ecuador. But most of them won't and the school wants them to have something else to fall back on. "A lot of people here suffer from a real lack of self-esteem," says Diana. "If someone asks them where they come from, many of them are embarrassed to say that they come from El Chota, because of all the poverty here.

"We're planning to change that, to give them self-esteem, to make them proud that they come from here."

The boys seem genuinely grateful to Agustin Delgado for the opportunity they've been given. All mention his name and thank him when asked about the school. All of them want to be like him.

As for Ecuador's chances in Japan, there are mixed views. One said confidently that a draw with Italy and wins over Croatia and Mexico would see them into the second round. Another said it didn't really matter what happened – the important thing was that Ecuador would be there.