These soccer fields around the world along with the universality of rooting for a team makes the world seem just a tad less bananas.

Where there is a will, there is a way to find somewhere to play.

Soccer Fields Around the World

One of the most appealing aspects of soccer is its simplicity—a ball, some open space, goal markers, and you can play. As the 2018 World Cup kicks off in Russia, with matches held in massive modern arenas, here is a look at the beautiful game in action in some smaller and more unusual venues around the world, including pitches built on a glacier, on a beach, floating in a river, made of straw, on a rooftop, and more.

In this photo (above) taken on June 3, 2017, a South Sudanese refugee boy holds a makeshift soccer ball as he plays with his friends in the Bidi Bidi refugee settlement in northern Uganda. Soccer fields and inter-village competitions are found across the world's largest refugee settlement. Even more are being created, underscoring the importance of sport in a community trying to forget the horrors of war with a rare source of entertainment in an otherwise dreary existence.

A floating pitch in Koh Panyee, in Thailand's southern Phang Nga province (left)
and Felice Acqueduct in Rome, Italy (right)

Former FARC rebels play football in the unarmed zone known as Territorial Spaces for Training and Reincorporation Antonio Narino, where former guerrilla fighters receive training to facilitate their development, reconciliation, and reincorporation into civilian life, in Icononzo, Colombia (left).

A man does pushups while guarding a goal post as he and others play soccer on a street during an anti-government protest in Port-au-Prince, Haiti (right).

KV Svalbard's crew, formed by Norwegian navy privates and scientists from the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research, play soccer as they are protected from polar bears by armed guards in the sea around Greenland (left).

Mountain Villages international soccer tournament match in Gspon, in the Swiss Alps, on May 29, 2010. The match is played on the highest elevated soccer field in Europe. At about 2,000 meters, the pitch can only be reached by a cable car, which can only carry up to 10 people, or on foot—a 45-minute climb (right).

A futsal pitch, built on the rooftop of a department store next to the Shibuya crossing (bottom left), in Tokyo, Japan (right).
Members of the Amazonian Tatuyo tribe play in their village in the Rio Negro near Manaus City (left).

Local boys play street football on Windmill Walk in Southwark, London, England (left).
The football stadium of Henninsvaer FC is photographed on March 8, 2018, in Henningsvaer, in Norway's Lofoten islands (right).

Children play soccer after the inauguration ceremony of a new pitch installed at Mineira favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on September 10, 2014. 200 self-energy-supplied Pavegen panels, invented by British Laurence Kemball-Cook, were installed underground to capture kinetic energy created by the movement of the football players. The energy is stored and combined with solar panels' energy to illuminate the pitch during the night (left).

Players attend a football tournament among local amateur teams in a stadium made of straw named Zenit Arena, in the settlement of Krasnoye in the Stavropol region of Russia (right).

Afghan boys play soccer in Kabul, Afghanistan (left).
Chickens run to avoid a soccer game at an evacuee center in Lolovoli village on the island of Ambae, part of the Vanuatu Islands chain, near Saratamata, on December 11, 2005, after most of the residents of the village fled to a safe zone away from the hazard of an erupting volcano (right).

Boys play soccer on a driftwood soccer court on the banks of the Rio Negro in Catalao community near Manaus, Brazil, on April 4, 2015. Residents of Catalao, a village of houseboats, built a floating wooden soccer court after their village field was flooded by the swollen Rio Negro (left).

Boys play football on a pitch at Tavares Bastos favela, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (right).