Eupen won the first game of the season, beating Dessel Sport from Antwerp 1-0 in front of their home supporters. But the Football Dreams players had a tough time adjusting to the physicality, tactics, and bad fields of the Belgian second division, and the team only won once more in the next 10 games. The players not only had to get used to opponents hacking them down but also to fans whistling at them when the team wasn’t performing. It was the first time the Football Dreams players had experienced the constant pressure of competing in a league. While they had played in tournaments and friendlies against some of the biggest teams in the world, they had never battled for league points week in and week out. Unlike the academy, they knew if their performance didn’t cut it, they were always at risk of being sent home. “The pressure is much higher,” said Diawandou. “Here you are playing for money. People are playing to help their family.”
Colomer, who sits on the team’s board, often flew all the way from Senegal to watch the boys play, giving them a hug and a few words of encouragement before they stepped on the field. Eupen would often dominate possession because the players were schooled in Barcelona’s quick passing game. But they struggled to score goals against teams that made up for their lack of technique with a combination of experience and brute force. Referees often weren’t much help since they let players get away with so much more than you would see on televised matches from Europe’s top leagues.
A game in the Belgian second division often looks like a thinly veiled wrestling match as the players grab at each other in their fight for the ball. When things really get out of hand, as they frequently do, the ref often tries to reestablish control with a flurry of yellow cards and the occasional red. But it never seems to do much good. “Most of the matches we had 70 to 80 percent ball possession, but no goals even though we had unbelievable chances,” said Henkel, the general manager. “We would lose 1-0, 1-0, 1-0, 2-1 because the other teams came two or three times at the goal and scored.” The Football Dreams players clearly still had a lot to learn.
They were also grappling with a new world off the field as they faced the challenge of living on their own for the first time. The Football Dreams players had spent the last five years in a completely sheltered environment that catered to their every need, and the African towns where they grew up before bore little resemblance to Eupen. They spent the first few weeks living at the Ambassador Hotel as the club found them apartments where they could live in groups of two or three. But there was plenty of confusion when Radermacher, the team manager, dropped them off at their apartments for the first time. “The players asked, ‘We stay here alone?’ ” said Radermacher. That was the plan, he told them. They also learned they would have to buy and cook their own food.
“Normally I say, ‘This is the apartment, here are the keys, see you tomorrow,’ ” said Radermacher. But he agreed to take them to the supermarket the next day. Unfortunately, that proved equally confusing. The players kept trying to pay the cashier for individual items, as you might in an African market. “I told them, ‘You have to take it all and then go to the cashier,’ ” said Radermacher. “But it was just this one time. They aren’t stupid.”
Cooking wasn’t any easier than shopping for the players once they returned to their apartments. Radermacher dropped by to check on a couple of the boys one day, and the Nigerian goalkeeper John Felagha said he had a problem and wanted the team manager’s help. “He said, ‘Hey, I put my chicken in the oven, but it never finished,’ ” said Radermacher. He agreed to have a look, but John didn’t lead him to the oven. Instead, he walked over to the dishwasher, opened it up and showed the team manager his uncooked chicken. “You have to put dishes inside, not food!” said Radermacher, trying to hold back his laughter. John complied and began filling the dishwasher with clean dishes. “No, not the clean ones!” The club eventually arranged a cooking course for the kids to show them how to make things like fish and salad, but they mostly ended up subsisting on a diet of pasta and rice because they were easier to make. At least they got breakfast and lunch at the club before and after training.
In general, the locals were pleasantly surprised by how well mannered the Football Dreams players were. Even those who didn’t agree with Qatar buying Eupen’s team praised the players for always offering a handshake whenever they met in the street. The boys were lucky that many of Eupen’s residents were just as well intentioned. Evers, the writer for the Grenz Echo, said he once spotted a few players struggling to get cash out of an ATM in the center of town. “They asked me for help and wanted to give me their PIN code,” said Evers. He helped them out but told them they really shouldn’t be handing out their PIN to people on the street.
Football Dreams players at a café in the center of Eupen.
Struggling with ATMs was just one problem the boys faced as they figured out how to manage having significant amounts of cash for the first time. Each Football Dreams player earned at least 77,000 euros a year, the Belgian-mandated salary for non-Europeans. Many spent freely on iPhones, expensive watches, and stylish new clothes from designers like Gucci and Wati B, bringing a distinctive flair to Eupen’s normally conservative, buttoned-down streets and cafes.
But the boys also faced constant demands on their newfound wealth from family and friends in Africa. They felt an intense responsibility to help those less fortunate and wired significant amounts of money back home. “I do that almost every month because I know how it feels to live without something,” said Anthony Bassey, who used to juggle a soccer ball on street corners in the Nigerian city of Uyo to help his family make ends meet. “I always send money for my siblings, for my mother to put them in school because that is the most important thing for now. Also to buy some food and keep some money for themselves whenever they need it.”
But some of the players had little ability to gauge how much they could afford to send back and showed up at the club toward the end of the month several times to say they had run out of cash. Still, the demands from home were relentless. Anthony had to change his cell number at one point because he was getting too many calls. He also grappled with a relative stealing money that was meant for his mom and siblings. “There was a time when I was having lots of problems with my family,” Anthony said. “There was too much pressure. I couldn’t concentrate, so I decided to change my phone line.”
Diawandou faced fewer demands from his family since they were already doing pretty well even before he went to the academy. But he received plenty of attention from friends and acquaintances, especially when he returned to Senegal for vacation. He often stayed holed up in his house to avoid the hassle. “I cannot go out,” said Diawandou. “People are always asking you for things; ‘give me juice, give me money.’ ”
He largely stayed at home in Eupen as well when he wasn’t training and played video games or watched movies with the two Senegalese players he lived with, Samba Ndiaye and Ibrahima Diedhiou. The three of them created a home away from home in their small wooden house near Eupen’s stadium. They drank Senegalese coffee and put dark brown Maggi sauce on everything they ate, just like they would back home. They even found a couple of local Senegalese friends who approached them after they heard the players speaking Wolof on the field. The new friends helped out by doing much of the cooking and cleaning at the house, making it even easier for the players to settle in. “Now we have a family,” said Diawandou.
As the Football Dreams players adjusted to life off the field in Eupen, they also gained more confidence on it, even though they faced a new nemesis: the cold. Their arrival coincided with one of the most brutal winters in years, bringing snow and frigid temperatures from November through March, a huge change for kids who had spent almost their entire lives in the heat of Africa and the Middle East. Many of the players had never even seen snow before arriving in Eupen. Now they were forced to train in it day in and day out. Never had the sizzling temperatures in Senegal or the weather-insulated dome in Qatar looked so good.
Despite the polar
vortex, the team’s performance gradually improved over the rest of the season, although never hitting the heights that perhaps some in the club and town had hoped. The team benefited from adding a few older players from Spain in the middle of the season, which injected even more experience into the young squad. “The players needed half a year to find their place on the field,” said Henkel, the general manager. “After that, they learned from match to match to be clever, to be professional, and to play to win the game.”
The Belgian season was divided into three different sections of 10 games each, and Eupen managed to finish fourth in the second portion of the season. By the end, the team was in eighth place overall, safely above the relegation zone but far away from clubs battling for promotion. Aspire’s goal was to make it to the first division because that would give the Football Dreams players even stiffer competition and a higher-profile platform to advertise their talent to bigger European clubs.
According to fans, the standout Football Dreams players that first season were Anthony Bassey and Samuel Asamoah. They loved how Anthony used his speed to menace defenders on the right wing even though he was only a little over five and a half feet tall. Samuel was even smaller but dominated the midfield against opponents who seemed twice his size. Even the coach, Tintin, thought Samuel had the best chance of making it to a top club out of all the Football Dreams players. “He’s very fast, has great endurance, control, passing, and vision of play,” said Tintin. “If we put Asamoah in Barcelona, he would play.”
But Samuel wasn’t the player Barcelona came looking for that season. It was the captain, Diawandou, who led the team from his position in central defense. While attacking players usually attract more attention, defenders can actually be more vital to a team’s success. Keeping a clean sheet is over two and a half times more valuable than scoring a goal in terms of a team winning points, according to the book The Numbers Game. But a defender’s skill is often more difficult to see because his biggest contribution is preventing goals, not scoring them. A defender doesn’t always do that with scything tackles that draw cheers from the crowd. In fact, the best tackle is the one a defender never has to make because superior positioning breaks up a play before it can even get started. But defensive positioning isn’t what usually stands out in the minds of fans and coaches. They’re focused on goals.
Diawandou was a little short compared to central defenders at many of Europe’s top clubs, but Barcelona had shown a willingness to buck that trend with players like Javier Mascherano, whose nickname is Jefecito, “the little boss.” Like Diawandou, Mascherano was a converted midfielder who only stood about five feet, nine inches tall. But the Argentine star possessed the technical skill, vision, and grit to hold off opposing strikers and could start Barcelona’s attack by bringing the ball forward out of the back. Diawandou sought to emulate Mascherano, and Barcelona clearly had similar ideas. The club contacted the Senegalese defender through Colomer to say they wanted him for their reserve squad, Barcelona B, which could serve as a launching point for the senior team.
That was an absolute dream for Diawandou. Barcelona was, of course, one of the biggest clubs in the world and home to Messi. It also happened to be Diawandou’s favorite team, and he had been schooled for years to play in the style of the Catalonian giants. But Diawandou didn’t jump on the next plane to Barcelona. Instead, he turned the club down. Colomer told him it wasn’t the right time. He still needed more experience, and Aspire was relying on him to help Eupen make the jump to the first division next season. It was a testament to his trust in the Spanish scout that he agreed. Imagine how many players in his position would have been tempted to brush Colomer aside, although Eupen did improve his contract to persuade him to stay.
“I didn’t want to let the project down,” said Diawandou. “Everything I have gotten until now is because of Aspire. If they tell me to stay, I’m going to stay because they have taken me far.” He also took Colomer’s guidance to heart that he needed more experience before making the jump to a top club, advice other players at the academy had ignored. “If you’re going to Barcelona, you need to be ready. I was not ready. I knew at Eupen I would play all the games. If you play, you get more confidence. But in Barcelona I would be in the second team, and who knows if I would play or not.”
Many other Football Dreams players at Eupen fared much worse than Diawandou did. At the end of the season, the club told over half a dozen of them that they were surplus to requirements and either needed to find another European team or head back home to Africa. One of them was the Nigerian goalkeeper John Felagha, who struggled with a persistent knee injury and lacked the size to compete with Eupen’s starting keeper from Germany. “He just couldn’t make it at this level,” said Tintin. “He has good qualities but not as good as the goalkeepers we had.” John failed to find another club in Europe that would take him and was forced to make the difficult journey back to his hometown in the Niger Delta. But he didn’t give up hope. “I spoke with Colomer and Lamine, and they said I should be patient,” said John. “They will look for something for me. I’m among the pioneers of the project. I want to succeed so the other goalkeepers can see they can do it.” They never ended up finding John another club but did invite him to join the Football Dreams staff to help with tryouts across the world, leaving some of his classmates quite envious.
Diawandou dribbling the ball during one of Eupen’s away games in Belgium.
Eupen’s coach also cast off Hamza Zakari, the Ghanaian midfielder who captained his national team in the Africa Cup of Nations playoff against Senegal. Tintin had no doubts about Hamza’s talent but barely played him because the two frequently clashed. “He has excellent qualities,” said Tintin. “He is fast, plays well. But the mentality is not there. There are football players like this whose mentality doesn’t allow them to compete.” Tintin wasn’t the first to grow frustrated with Hamza’s sometimes prickly attitude. Even at the academy, he developed a reputation as someone who was difficult to coach. “Hamza is a player who if he wants can be unbelievable,” said academy coach Jordi Rovira. “But do you want to be the best, or is the pressure too much?”
Tintin first had issues with Hamza when he started coaching the Football Dreams players in Doha and the Ghanaian constantly refused to train, saying he was injured. The coach was dubious and figured much of it was in his head. Tintin finally reached his breaking point in Eupen during a friendly match before the season even started. Hamza refused to come out of the locker room at halftime, leaving only 10 players on the field and the coach apoplectic. Hamza said he felt sick and couldn’t play, but Tintin didn’t want to hear any more excuses. “Tintin was very angry with him,” said Forewah Emmanuel, one of the Football Dreams staff members. “He told Hamza, ‘When I am talking to you, look at me!’ But Hamza was not looking at him. Tintin said, ‘Fine, you will not play.’ Hamza was nervous, but the coach didn’t understand his problem.” For his part, Hamza insists he really was sick and believes Tintin simply didn’t like him from the beginning.
The coach eventually gave up trying to understand Hamza’s problems and simply told him he needed to find another team. Luckily for the Ghanaian, he was able to find a club playing in Norway’s top division, Tromso IL, that would take him on loan. But he continued to be plagued by various ailments, real or imagined, and soon found himself transferred to a second division club in the tiny Icelandic town of Selfoss. That didn’t work out either, and before long, Hamza was back in Ghana wondering what to do next. “We are still trying with Hamza,” said Lamine Savané, the Football Dreams country director in Senegal. “We are trying to push him to understand. A professional coach just doesn’t have the time. If you’re difficult, I have someone who is easy, so why bother?”
Many of the other Football Dreams players who left also ended up playing for clubs in third- or fourth-tier soccer nations like Latvia or Estonia or had to make the tough trek back to Africa to regroup. Although they may have thrived at the academy, they struggle
d to succeed once they were up against opponents in Europe likely closer to their own age. For instance, Jasper Uwa, the zippy little Nigerian striker who scored against Neymar’s Brazil in Doha and continued to rain in goals during his time in Senegal, couldn’t replicate that form at Eupen. “Many times a player will score many goals in one category but not when they move up,” said Tintin. Like Jasper, many of the players lacked the talent necessary to make up for their size in a league that often prized brute force over technique.
There were opportunities to play in Africa as well, but the players often had no interest because they would earn a pittance compared to Eupen. It would also be a blow to their pride after everyone thought they were going to be big stars in Europe. They cultivated this image online while they were at the academy by posting pictures of their travels around the world and their meet and greets with famous players like Messi. “It’s very difficult for them to go back after it doesn’t work out, especially because of the life they project on Facebook,” said a Nigerian Football Dreams staff member, Godwin Malu.
Unfortunately, they had little to fall back on if professional soccer didn’t work out. Despite Aspire’s message that education was just as important as training while they were at the academy, only one of the Football Dreams players from the first class actually received a high school diploma. The number was zero in the second class. The situation didn’t improve much in future years either, as only 10 percent of the kids ended up getting a diploma while they were at the academy. Aspire officials said they struggled with the fact that the boys arrived with varying levels of education and sometimes lacked the motivation to study. Some of the boys admitted as much, saying they used school as a chance to catch up on sleep since they were exhausted from training twice a day and didn’t think class really mattered. That attitude continued when the players reached Eupen, even though Aspire brought in a social worker who offered to help them continue their education. “The offer is there for all the players,” said Stefan Wetzel. “They have a lot of time and could do something, but it’s tough to motivate them.”
The Away Game Page 21
