"I was walking the streets of a slum called Sambizanga in the Angolan capital of Luanda when I saw this football game. Angola is awash with oil and diamonds, but 70% of Angolans live below the poverty line, many in neighborhoods like this one. My local guide and I stopped to talk and dribble a bit with the boys. They’d rented a ball for a few hours from a Chinese businessman, one of hundreds of thousands living in Angola. At the time, I was working on a photo exhibition about football in Africa. For over twenty years, I’ve been telling stories from the continent about subjects other than war, misery, or disease. A friend of mine who works at the Italian photo agency ParalleloZero asked me for the picture. Soon after, it appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, a magazine I knew only for its famous calendar with beautiful models in bikinis on the beach. I sent a copy to my local guide in Angola. I hope the kids I photographed were happy to see ‘their cover’."

From Michele Malter's blog post about Marco's print:

There is so much beauty in Marco Trovato's print of children playing football in Angola: the vivid red of the children’s clothing against the dusty brown background, the sense of movement, the look of determination on the boy’s face as he kicks the football. But perhaps what is most beautiful to me is the fact that the photograph is of children doing what they do best - being children.  Too often, children in Angola, and in most of Sub-Saharan Africa, don’t get the chance to experience as many moments like this as they should.  Right now, a child dies in Africa every 45 seconds from malaria, a preventable and treatable disease.  Moreover, when malaria doesn’t kill, it can have significant effects on a child’s health and development, keeping them out of school and, in some cases, causing permanent neurological damage. At Malaria No More, we are working hard to end malaria deaths in Africa by 2015 through strategic investments on the ground, such as the delivery of mosquito nets and rapid diagnostic tests; innovative communications campaigns to increase net usage and awareness; and advocacy efforts to mobilize additional resources for the fight against malaria. 

You can view more of Marco's work on his website.