{"id":220221,"date":"2026-06-16T07:51:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T07:51:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/220221\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T07:51:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T07:51:19","slug":"salone-fc-celebrates-25-years-growing-youth-soccer-in-philadelphia-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/220221\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Salone FC’ celebrates 25 years growing youth soccer in Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (WPVI) — Foday Turay had a successful soccer career in West Africa. He ultimately moved to Philadelphia, where he’s spent the last 25 years helping kids put their best foot forward.<\/p>\n

His Southwest Philly soccer club, ‘Salone FC,’ gets its name from his home country, ‘Sierra Leone.’<\/p>\n

Since 2001, he and his community partners have coached hundreds of children. Some even hail from other parts of the world like Turay.<\/p>\n

This year, they are not only celebrating their 25th anniversary, but also the arrival of the World Cup in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

Recently, some team members were able to view the FIFA World Cup trophy when it was on tour at the University of Pennsylvania’s Palestra.<\/p>\n

Turay says the entire city worked hard to bring the World Cup home.<\/p>\n

“I was blessed enough to work with the board to put the bid in to host the World Cup here in Philadelphia,” he said. “Our dream to watch the World Cup in Philadelphia is going to happen.”<\/p>\n

Watch the video above to see what all the excitement is about.<\/p>\n

To learn more about Salone FC, visit their website.<\/a><\/p>\n

RELATED: Special Olympics athlete scores spot on Team New Jersey for USA Games<\/a><\/p>\n

There were no dry eyes when Alexa Valletta’s dream came true. The soccer star will soon compete for Team New Jersey at the Special Olympics USA Games.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (WPVI) — Foday Turay had a successful soccer career in West Africa. He ultimately moved to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[26724,95845,69,71,70,7625,95844,11868,47564,72155,2236],"class_list":["post-220221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-club","tag-foday-turay","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philly","tag-salone-fc","tag-soccer","tag-southwest","tag-trophy","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}