If you’re desperate for some World Cup action before the nexttournament in 2018, turn your attention to Amsterdam in the middle of September for the Homeless World Cup, an annual event aimed at ending global homelessness supported by Colin Farrell, who was named as an ambassador for the effort last week.

“I have seen how the Homeless World Cup really does inspire homeless people to change the direction of their lives,” said Farrell in a new video for the event. “Change is a team effort.”

Farrell first linked up with the Homeless World Cup in 2008 to narrate a documentary called Kicking It, the story of six players participating in the tournament in Cape Town, South Africa. Wikipedia says that the Homeless World Cup “operates through a network of more than 70 national partners around the world, supporting football programs and social enterprise development.”

That’s good enough for Dubliner Farrell, who likes to get involved in causes for the greater good.

“The camaraderie that football signified in my life as a young boy…just being part of team, being part of a collective with a common purpose,” Farrell said of the role soccer – okay, football in world parlance – played in his life.

Farrell will appear in movie about the Irish Homeless World Cup team in Chile in 2014. And in the meantime, he’s got to be feeling pretty satisfied about his latest career effort, his starring role in the second season of the HBO drama True Detective.

The show’s ratings – if not all the reviews – have been stellar, with the premiere episode a couple of Sundays ago ranking as the series’ second most watched episode ever, with 3.2 million viewers.