A boy looks back while he and another boy play on a Syrian military tank, destroyed during fighting with the Rebels, in the Syrian town of Azaz, on the outskirts of Aleppo, Sunday, September 2, 2012. (Photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP Photo)

As Russia puts the finishing touches to the carefully manicured fields that will host the World Cup from next week, people around the globe are playing soccer on a surprising variety of makeshift pitches. Off the coast of an island in southern Thailand, they play on a floating platform; in the mountains of northern Italy, they kick about in the snow – images captured by Reuters photographers around the world. Here: Local residents play soccer on the top floor of a parking garage in Jakarta, Indonesia, May 4, 2018. (Photo by Darren Whiteside/Reuters)

A woman athlete aims an air rifle while competing in a local shooting championship in Yemen's Huthi rebel-held capital Sanaa on January 3, 2023. (Photo by Mohammed Huwais/AFP Photo)

A Maasai boy bites a bull's heart during an initiation into an age group ceremony near the town of Bisil, Kajiado county, Kenya, August 23, 2018. Thousands of Kenyan boys had a blessing of milk and beer sprayed on them as part of a rare Maasai ethnic community initiation ceremony to mark their passing into early manhood. (Photo by Baz Ratner/Reuters)

Santa Claus greets a child during a visit to residents of the slum of Petare in Caracas, Venezuela, December 11, 2016. (Photo by Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)

Mickey McCooper, born 1972 as Michel Valentino in Stuttgart-Germany, is a photo-artist, filmmaker, painter, and media-entrepreneur. He is well known for the broad range of subject matter he is able to interpret, he is widely recognized for his unusual people portraiture, his editorial photography, his photo illustrations, photographic design and his extraordinary repertoire of art photography, painings and drawings.

Photo: Space Invaders, 2011. (Photo by Mickey McCooper)

A young girl works at a construction site in Patiala district, Rajpura, India on November 20, 2019. (Photo by Saqib Majeed/Barcroft Media)

Friends take photos of themselves on La Ultima beach which was reopened this week after it was closed for months amid the COVID-19 pandemic in La Guaira, Venezuela, Friday, October 23, 2020. Strict quarantine restrictions forced the closure of beaches across the country in March and reopened this week in hopes of revitalizing the battered economy. (Photo by Matias Delacroix/AP Photo)