At first glance, Michael Knight looks like the typical working-class D.C. resident. The strain of a hard 50 years reveals itself in his raspy voice and salt-and-pepper goatee. He wears modest, worn jeans and an old sweatshirt, and can often be found at CCNV, the largest shelter in D.C. where he currently lives.

But for a week at the end of September, he was not a middle-aged homeless man invisible to the world, but a prominent diplomat and soccer star traveling the streets of South Africa with pride and confidence.

That whirlwind trip has changed Knight forever in both body and spirit. The resulting signs of dignity show not just in the medal hung around his neck and tucked beneath his shirt, but also in the new air of confidence and aura of peace that surround him.

“I’ve realized that it’s not just about me, but everything is bigger than me. There is so much going on,” he said. “I have more compassion and more understanding of people’s weaknesses because I know my weaknesses. And I know there is greatness in everyone.”

Knight went to South Africa as part of the U.S. Homeless World Cup Team, one of 48 teams from across the world with more than 500 participants.

After six days of competing in 4-on-4 soccer, Russia took first place, with the United States coming in 46th (beating out Norway and Malawi). Knight admits that he is “not a strong player,” and that the first time he kicked a soccer ball was this summer, when a handful of CCNV residents started practicing for the Homeless USA Cup.

But he said the trip was not about winning.

“It was not about me playing soccer but the whole idea of playing soccer to bring attention to this whole cause and the problem of homelessness around the world,” Knight said.

With sponsors like Nike and the Union of European Football Association, and special guests like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Ringo Starr, the Homeless World Cup has progressed in just four years from a sarcastic bet between the directors of two street papers to a worldwide phenomenon.

It has also changed the lives of the players, all of whom are homeless or used to be. A year after the 2004 Homeless World Cup, 78 of the 204 participants were working regular jobs — including 16 that became professional soccer players or coaches — and 95 improved their housing conditions.

Last year just 26 teams, including one from the U.S., took part in the tournament held in Scotland. This year a whole new batch of U.S. players attended, including Knight, the first one from Washington, D.C.

Knight became homeless nine months ago on ending an 18-month stint in prison. Dropped off at the Central Union Mission with “$42 in my pocket and a jean outfit on my back,” he soon switched to the CCNV shelter. There he helped in the computer lab by day and worked at the Verizon Center at night (a job he learned he’d lost upon his return from South Africa).

Late in June he saw a poster in the computer lab advertising tryouts for soccer players for the Homeless USA Cup, and decided to give that sport a try. “It was difficult getting people to show up, but there were four of us that were faithful and getting into it,” he said.

So the team of four went to Charlotte and had a great time — but placed last in the tournament. It therefore seemed to Knight he’d lost to the team from Atlanta, the winner, his chance to go to South Africa and represent the U.S. in the Homeless World Cup. .

Then he lucked out. Because of passport problems the Atlanta players could not go. Just two weeks before the start of the tournament, Knight received the call: he would go to South Africa with the rest of his team, by this time a hodgepodge of players from New York, Charlotte and elsewhere. Passport issues should have also held up Knight, who is on parole and thought he was unable to leave D.C., let alone the country. He also had trouble tracking down his birth certificate and even making it to the passport agency in New York. Apparently despairing of his making their scheduled flight, the rest of the U.S. team and its coach Jeff Grunberg left two days before Knight at last procured his passport.

“I am still in awe that I was able to go,” Knight said. “Everyone was saying I should just let it go and that it’s not going to happen, but I said, ‘No! I am claiming this.’”

And once Knight got to South Africa — and managed to find where the players were staying — he said it was like a dream come true. He said the players were treated like royalty, parading through the streets, having videos made of their every move and being surrounded by locals hanging on to their every word.

Knight said he even shook the hands of Archbishop Tutu and South African president Thabo Mbeki.

And the players also bonded, Knight reported, not because of their homeless situation back in their countries of origin, but through religion, politics, comedy — and most important, soccer. But amongst all the fanfare and camaraderie, Knight said what he remembers most are the locals from South Africa, who made him realize how the littlest gestures can mean so much.

He recalls that after a match on one of the last days, a young South African girl came up to him and asked him for something of his she could take away for a souvenir. And Knight, standing there in his sweat-drenched soccer outfit and cleats, told her he had nothing. She then asked for his dirty socks because she had none of her own.

“And when I took off my socks and gave them to her, she gave me a big hug,” Knight explained. “What meant so much to her was something that I had taken for granted.”