The Away Game

by Sebastian Abbot

  Messi is often described in the press as more of a “natural talent” when compared to his Real Madrid rival, Cristiano Ronaldo, who is frequently painted as a product of sheer determination and hard work. But this storyline masks the psychological factors behind the Argentine’s success. How many 13-year-olds would have the mental and emotional toughness to thrive despite moving to a foreign land at such a young age and watching the decision break up his family? Messi had to deal with his mother moving back to Argentina with his little sister, while he stayed in Barcelona with his father. He also had to decide each night which of his skinny legs to stick with a needle to inject the hormone he needed to grow. Despite these challenges, Messi persevered.

  Psychologists call this kind of perseverance to achieve long-term goals grit. Grittier individuals are more likely to stay married, keep their jobs, and pursue further education. A study published in 2016 looked at the role grit played in the performance of elite youth soccer players in Australia. Using questionnaires, researchers found that grittier players accumulated significantly more hours of training over the years, including playing pickup soccer, and had correspondingly higher game intelligence when tested with match footage.

  But grit is just one of a multitude of psychological traits that could influence a player’s potential, and researchers have struggled to figure out which ones are most vital to future success. Another study published in 2016 examined a much wider set of psychological traits among Under-12 players in the German talent development program to determine their impact on future success (defined as whether they were selected for professional clubs’ youth academies at the Under-16 level).

  Using questionnaires, researchers looked at seventeen different psychological scales related to traits like motivation, concentration, self-confidence, and anxiety control. Ten of the scales demonstrated predictive power, but the size of the impact was small (each explained only 1 to 3 percent of the difference in future success). That led the researchers to conclude that the tests weren’t powerful enough to use for talent identification. “There are probably about a million inventories out there that you could measure players on to isolate some aspect of personality disposition, but historically these have been proven not to have great predictive utility,” said A. Mark Williams, the editor of Science and Soccer.

  Despite this uncertainty, some clubs have sought to become more rigorous in their evaluation of players’ personalities. Mark Allen, the former head of Manchester City’s academy, said the club had begun using a test developed by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck to determine whether youth players have the right outlook to succeed. Dweck calls this a “growth mindset,” which means a person believes success is based on hard work rather than innate ability. She has found that children with growth mindsets are more motivated to learn and get better grades than their peers. Allen said early results indicated the test was useful in identifying players who didn’t have the mentality to cut it at the academy and beyond. But even if the club could establish a direct link, it would still face the challenge of figuring out how to weigh the results against all the other factors that must be taken into account.

  To help soccer scouts cope with the multidimensional nature of talent identification, many clubs have created formal criteria to guide them in evaluating young players. They’re often expressed as acronyms. The most famous, TIPS, was developed by the Dutch club Ajax and stands for technique, insight, personality, and speed. Scouts in England have used TABS (technique, attitude, balance, and speed) and SUBS (speed, understanding, personality, and skill).

  Clubs often tweak their evaluation criteria, but historically technique at Ajax was broken down into skills like dribbling, passing, crossing, shooting, heading, and tackling. Insight covered vision and decision making when it came to positioning, making runs, selecting passes, and covering opponents. Personality included leadership ability, match mentality, attitude toward others, receptivity to coaching, and ability to withstand pressure. Speed was measured off the mark, from zero to 10 meters, 10 to 30 meters, above 30 meters, and with the ball. Twice a year, all players were assessed and given one of three marks that determined their future at the academy (A = stay, B = doubtful, C = go).

  But many of these observations at clubs continue to be quite subjective based on the views of scouts and coaches standing on the sidelines. That’s especially true when it comes to game intelligence and personality, which are the hardest qualities to measure and may have the most bearing on whether a young player will succeed. It’s perhaps no surprise then that the success rate of picking kids who make it to the sport’s top level is incredibly low, even at the best academies.

  James Bunce, the former head of sports science at the Premier League, said only half a percent of the kids who join a Premier League academy at the Under-9 level end up making it to the club’s first team, according to an article in the Guardian. That’s one in 200 kids. The numbers aren’t much better for young players hoping to make a living in the sport at any level. An education and welfare officer at a top European academy told the authors of the book Youth Development in Football that only about 5 percent of the kids there would have a career as professionals. “If this was the success rate in a school, it would most likely be closed down,” the authors concluded.

  Five percent might even be high. In The Nowhere Men, Michael Calvin said only around 1 percent of the 10,000 kids in the entire English academy system would make a living in the game, and two-thirds of those given a professional contract at age 18 are out of professional soccer by the time they’re 21 years old. That hasn’t stopped clubs from aggressively recruiting kids as young as 5 years old. Much like venture capital investing, the money made from one home run, or saved by not having to buy an equivalent player, can make up for a high number of failures.

  But kids aren’t companies, and there’s a serious personal cost for the thousands who don’t make it. Plenty of players who are identified as the next big star at a young age dedicate thousands of hours to training and then watch their career prospects peter out over the years. Perhaps the initial scout’s assessment was wrong, or the player got injured or simply didn’t have the personality to succeed. Multiple paths can lead to dead ends. Along the way, players are forced to sacrifice time with family and often end up neglecting their schoolwork. Many struggle to figure out a new path forward when a professional career doesn’t work out. Of course, there can be real benefits to academy life as well: camaraderie with teammates, learning the importance of hard work, and so on. But the sting of failure can be painful and lasting. The sad reality is an industry built on dreams ends up dashing almost all of them.

  What about the kids Colomer was selecting across Africa? Would they fare any better? He certainly thought so. In fact, Colomer predicted around half the kids he picked for the final tryout in Doha that first year would become professionals, 50 times the percentage that makes it from the English academy system. “Many, many names you will see in professional leagues, top leagues,” he said at the time. His confidence was fueled by the fact that Football Dreams had a much larger pool of young players to choose from than any club in the world. “Look, Barcelona is selecting from a small country, Catalonia. They take one or two from Spain and a rare one from outside. In Football Dreams, we select from a continent, and a continent full of football.”

  Like many scouts, Colomer was sure he could sift through this vast pool to find the hidden gems because he had spent so many years hunting for talent. “A cook sees a steak and knows the flavor, level of salt, level of cooking,” said Colomer. “A doctor knows symptoms in a patient. It comes from experience. It is the same for us. Our job is to anticipate the future of these talents. But like any doctor or any cook, we make mistakes.”

  One way Colomer tried to limit the number of mistakes was by using sports scientists to estimate the biological ages of the boys at the final tryouts in the African capitals to avoid picking players simply because they were more physically matur
e. This was done using the peak height velocity test, which determines the age at which a child is growing fastest. For example, the test may say a 13-year-old boy will hit peak height velocity at the age of 15, meaning he’s a late maturer. Alternatively, it could say he was growing fastest at 11 years old, meaning he’s an early maturer. The test is based on a boy’s date of birth, height, sitting height, and weight. But using it in Africa can be challenging because it’s often difficult to pin down a child’s exact date of birth. Aspire required players to bring a copy of their birth certificate or a document from school, but they weren’t always accurate.

  The sports scientists also carried out several physical tests at both the tryouts in the capitals and in Doha. They included a 40-meter sprint; a standing vertical jump, which measures leg power; and an endurance run. Colomer didn’t use this information as a primary decision-making tool since these physical traits don’t have much predictive power. He might look at the data when comparing two players with a similar level of talent, especially to get an idea of their speed. But he was much more focused on technique, game intelligence, and personality. Science says that’s the right strategy, but it’s far from a foolproof one. Having a massive pool of players was great, but it wouldn’t do Colomer any good if he picked the wrong ones.

  A few days after Colomer first spotted Diawandou in Thiès, the young player headed to Dakar to compete against the other top 50 players from Senegal for the chance to go to the final in Doha. The tryout in Dakar was held at one of Senegal’s largest stadiums, Léopold Sédar Senghor, named after the country’s first president. The stadium is home to Senegal’s national team and can pack 60,000 screaming fans into a sea of red, yellow, and green plastic seats, the colors of the country’s flag.

  The venue was a far cry from the dirt pitch where Colomer discovered Diawandou in Thiès, but the young player wasn’t fazed. The setting actually gave Diawandou an advantage since he was used to playing on grass and wearing cleats. Many of the other players had spent most of their time on dirt fields kicking the ball around barefoot or in plastic sandals. At least one boy tried to play in borrowed cleats during the tryout and quickly switched back to sandals because he didn’t feel comfortable.

  Diawandou may not have been as flashy as Bernard but still impressed Colomer, especially with the composure and leadership he displayed on the pitch. From the beginning of the tryout, Diawandou took up his natural role as captain and directed the movement of players around him. Colomer wasn’t the only one who was impressed. “At the end of the four-day test, all the coordinators thought Diawandou should be chosen,” said his coach, Bousso Ndiaye, who attended the tryout. “All the coordinators said this boy is in the academy.” And he still wasn’t playing his regular position. After Diawandou’s performance in the first tryout, Colomer continued to play him in central defense, even though at roughly five and a half feet, he was far from the tallest player on the field. Senegal sometimes feels like an entire population of NBA players since so many people are strikingly tall.

  Despite this disadvantage, Diawandou felt confident he would be one of the three players to make it to Doha. That wasn’t what he sensed from many of the others. They were never far away because the players all stayed in spartan rooms inside the stadium complex during the tryout. “I heard people saying, ‘Hey, this guy is very good, huh?’ ” said Diawandou. “You know that means they weren’t having so much confidence to believe they can make it.” He felt just the opposite. Football Dreams seemed like destiny. “Over the four days, I believed I would make it because this dream needs to come true,” he said. “I needed to make it because this is my time.”

  It was indeed. The Football Dreams staff would normally wait several days after the tryout is over to notify the players who have been selected to go to the final in Doha. That was true for the other Senegalese boys who made the cut and received calls after they returned home. But Colomer didn’t wait to tell Diawandou. “When the tryout finished, Colo told me, ‘Don’t go, stay,’ ” said Diawandou. “The other players were leaving, but he told me they picked me to go to the tryout.” Diawandou didn’t want to brag, so he didn’t tell anyone when he got home. He waited for the Football Dreams staff to call his family. “It was amazing in the house that day,” said Diawandou. “Everybody was happy, saying I wish you good luck, I know you love football and can succeed.”

  When the day finally rolled around for Diawandou to travel to Qatar, he celebrated with his family and half a dozen friends at his home in Thiès. They tucked into a large bowl of chicken yassa and then played a pickup game on the dirt street outside in the harsh afternoon sun, pinging the ball against the concrete walls of surrounding homes. After the game, a friend who was an especially devout Muslim stopped Diawandou in the street to offer him a special prayer to protect travelers. The two stood face to face, heads bowed, hands out, palms turned to the sky. When his friend finished praying, he smiled, shook Diawandou’s hand, and wished him good luck in Doha.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Target

  Soccer players come in all sizes—small, medium, and large. With Bernard and Diawandou, Colomer had checked the first two boxes, small and medium. No surprise there. Many of the game’s greatest players sit in those same boxes: Maradona at five feet, five inches; Messi at five feet, seven inches; and Pelé at five feet, eight inches. But there’s also no denying the potential value of a classic target man, a big striker who can manhandle opposing defenders, hold up the ball for his teammates, and rain in goals himself. Think of Didier Drogba at six feet, two inches, or Zlatan Ibrahimović at six feet, five inches.

  With those images in mind, it’s no mystery why the Football Dreams scouts liked what they saw when they first laid eyes on Ibrahima Dramé in the sleepy town of Ziguinchor in southern Senegal. He was already nearly six feet tall, had a nose for goal, and a level of self-confidence that matched or even exceeded his height. But that wasn’t always the case. When Ibrahima first showed up at his neighborhood soccer school as an 8-year-old, the coach told him he couldn’t play. He was too small and might get hurt, the coach said. But that didn’t stop Ibrahima. He hadn’t yet grown, but his confidence was already Size Large. And for him, soccer was the ticket out of a life already defined by hardship.

  Ibrahima’s father, Moussa, came to Ziguinchor from neighboring Gambia when he was around 18 years old, hoping to make enough money to escape from Africa to Europe. He took a job in Ziguinchor’s small port, carrying sacks of rice and other supplies to the long wooden boats that make their way along the mighty Casamance River that runs alongside the town. Many are brightly painted in the colors of Senegal’s flag, red, yellow, and green. With over 300,000 people, Ziguinchor is the largest town in Casamance, the area of southern Senegal separated from the rest of the country by the Gambia. The town was once an important colonial outpost for the Portuguese and French, but economic growth has slowed considerably in recent years, partly because of a decades-long separatist insurgency that racked Casamance, now one of the poorest regions of Senegal.

  Whitewashed colonial buildings that sprang up near the river long ago have since crumbled and grown dark with grime, giving Ziguinchor the feel of a faded postcard. A stack of old red roof tiles made in Bordeaux sits in the dirt next to one building. It’s easy to imagine French soldiers sitting on the veranda years earlier, sipping wine as the sun set over the river. Dotted with palm trees and bright red and purple bougainvillea, Ziguinchor feels much more tropical than the concrete jungles of Dakar and Thiès. That’s true even as you move away from the river toward the more densely populated part of town, where the red dirt roads are lined with poorly constructed concrete homes often set behind walls made of rusted sheets of metal. Life moves at a more languid pace than in Senegal’s other big cities, and birds can still be heard chirping in the trees. Even at the town’s port, fishermen seem in no hurry as they haul in their catch or sit and mend their nets. Pods of river dolphins occasionally break the surface of the water nearby.
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br />   Ibrahima’s father eventually gave up his job at the port and acquired a wooden pushcart, which he used to eke out a meager living transporting goods around town. He also met Ibrahima’s mother, Oumou, and the short stay he had planned in Ziguinchor became permanent when the two married. But the marriage didn’t last. They divorced when Ibrahima was around 7 years old, leaving his mother with the difficult task of trying to scrape together enough money to raise him and his three siblings. His father used everything he earned to support his second wife and their many kids.

  Only months after the two separated, life got even harder for Ibrahima’s mother. The small mud house she was living in with her kids collapsed after a heavy rain, and they had to move in with her own mother, all sleeping in a single room made from crude concrete blocks. They cooked meals on a coal stove outside, shielded from the elements by a few rusted sheets of metal held up by a slender wooden pole. To make a little money, Ibrahima’s mother set up a table beside a nearby road to sell mangoes and small plastic bags of peanuts. “It was very difficult for me to raise Ibrahima and his brothers by myself,” said his mother, who often has trouble holding back tears when reliving the memory.

  Ibrahima’s brother, Sekou, was only about 12 years old at the time but felt like he needed to do something to help since he was the oldest son. Against his mother’s wishes, he dropped out of school so he could work with the fishermen at the port and ended up earning enough money to buy the family basic goods like rice and cooking oil. Sekou insisted Ibrahima stay in class, even though his school, housed in a run-down French military barracks, was nothing to write home about. Ibrahima mostly listened to his brother, although as he got older, he occasionally skipped school as well so he could go down to the port and help the family. “It was so difficult, but that’s life in Africa,” said Ibrahima. “Your family doesn’t have power, you go fight for them.”