Some of the older players at Eupen also tried to convince the boys to think about their future if soccer didn’t work out, including Manel Exposito, whom Colomer lured to Belgium years after coaching him at his local soccer school in Vic and then signing him at Barcelona. “My advice as well is to study,” said Exposito. “It’s good to grow as a football player, but maybe one day you will get injured and your career stops, and later what do you do?” But most of them ignored his advice, even after they watched many of their Football Dreams classmates forced out of the club. They were convinced they were the ones who would succeed.
The second season started with much more promise. Eupen leaped to first place in the league after the first 10 games, a position that would automatically mean promotion to the first division if the team could hold on to it until the end of the season. Anything less would lead to a difficult four-way playoff. Eupen’s rising fortunes improved the town’s attitude toward Aspire and the Football Dreams players, and more people started coming to the matches. The bump was limited, though. The largest crowds still maxed out at around 3,000 people since the team had to compete for attention with big German clubs across the border, like FC Cologne and FC Schalke 04.
Perhaps most important, the Zebras returned. The supporter group still opposed Qatar’s purchase of the club, but its members grew bored whiling away nights they used to spend at the stadium cheering on their team. “After many months, the guys were sitting in the bar and were thinking, ‘Fuck, what are we doing? Saturday night, Jesus Christ, we have nothing to do,’ ” said the 23-year-old president of the Zebras, Raphael Pelzer. After a heated debate beneath the Eupen banners that hung from the ceiling of their local watering hole, A Ge Pompke, many of the supporters agreed to return. “We said, ‘OK, we will do it for our hometown because the club represents the city and the German region,’ ” said Pelzer.
The club also encouraged their return by once again using red and yellow jerseys at times to match the town’s traditional colors, just like the Zebras had demanded. The supporters appreciated the gesture and marched back into the stadium to take up their customary position behind goal. They hung their large red and yellow Zebras banner over the railing and picked up where they left off, banging drums and leading the crowd in raucous chants. The ringleader, a bearded guy with a beer gut, carried a megaphone and used it to great effect. It was the kind of atmosphere that had been missing since the Zebras’ boycott, and the team was glad to have them back. There was a second supporter group in town, the Pandas, but it was mostly composed of older fans who spent games slurping down beers and steaming cups of mulled wine. They left the drumming and chanting to the youngsters. The players showed their appreciation by filing over to the Zebras’ end after matches to sign autographs and high-five the fans.
Colomer was also happy with how the team was doing and once again flew from Senegal on many weekends to watch the Football Dreams players compete. “We are maybe the youngest team in Europe for the first and second divisions; we play good football and many people come see us,” said Colomer, sitting on the sideline of one of Eupen’s games that season in the small town of Tubize. “I think we are on our way, but when you work with youth, it takes time. You have to be patient, and people need to trust you.”
Excitement grew in Eupen as the end of the season approached and, with it, the chance of promotion to the first division. The team entered the last week of the season in second place but still had one more chance of regaining the top spot and automatically moving up. As it turned out, the final match, on April 27, 2014, was against KVC Westerlo, a club from a small town near Antwerp that sat in first place, one point above Eupen. If the Pandas could win the game, they would slide into the top spot and be promoted. Eupen had beaten Westerlo 1-0 back in November, but that was at home. Now they had to play in Westerlo’s stadium, no easy task. Westerlo had spent 15 years in the first division before being relegated to the second division a few seasons earlier and was desperate to move back up.
As the match approached, a war of words broke out between the coaches of both teams. Westerlo’s manager, Dennis Van Wijk, told the press, “Which do you prefer? Seeing a team with 99 percent Belgians move up to D1 or seeing a club with 99 percent foreigners become champion?” Tintin fired back by saying Van Wijk was no Belgian himself since he came from the Netherlands. “They call me Tintin,” said Eupen’s coach. “I’m more Belgian than he is!” Tintin also pointed out that both of Eupen’s leading scorers were Belgian, while Westerlo relied on a pair of strikers from the Ivory Coast and the Netherlands.
This kind of attack was nothing new for Eupen. They had been hearing the same thing ever since the Football Dreams players showed up. “Everyone in Belgium was saying Eupen has too many foreigners,” said Diawandou. But Tintin urged them to block out the criticism and only focus on beating Westerlo. “He said, ‘This is your time,’ ” said Diawandou. “You are young. If you go to the first division, you will write your own story because you are the youngest team in Belgium.” The Senegalese captain also gathered the other Football Dreams players together to rally them for the match. “I told them this is our opportunity,” said Diawandou. “Promotion to the first division at 19 years old would be great.”
Eupen’s fans showed up en masse on street corners throughout town as the team’s bus left for the two-hour drive to Westerlo. To fire up the players, the coach asked the bus driver to circle around and pass the fans several times as they cheered and held up banners. As the bus finally pulled away, Diawandou donned his headphones to listen to the Quranic music that had soothed his mind on game day ever since he was a young boy in Thiès. Other players also hit play on their iPhones or took out something to read, whatever they needed to steady their nerves.
Westerlo’s fans were certainly looking to rattle them as soon as they arrived at the stadium, which was bathed in yellow and blue, Westerlo’s team colors. Known as the Small Tank, the stadium could hold about 8,000 people, and nearly every one of them waved a Westerlo flag or scarf as they cheered on their side. They also wore yellow and blue wigs, as well as face paint and, of course, team jerseys. Over a thousand Eupen fans, including Colomer and several other senior Aspire executives, also made the trip, but they were drowned out by their rivals. Those who hadn’t come watched the match on a huge screen set up in the center of Eupen, with beers in hand and black and white team scarves around their necks.
Diawandou was excited for the match and undaunted by the roar of Westerlo’s fans around the stadium. “I love this kind of pressure,” said the Senegalese captain. He led his side onto the field wearing a red captain’s armband around the sleeve of his black and white striped jersey. Aspire’s logo featured prominently in the middle of his chest. Eupen got a lucky break in the opening minutes of the match when a Westerlo midfielder was sent off for throwing an elbow into the face of one of Eupen’s players, sending him tumbling to the ground. But the Pandas were unable to capitalize on being a man up before making their own mistake. The team’s keeper, Jonas Deumeland, let an easy save slip through his legs about fifteen minutes later and was forced to drag down a Westerlo player inside the penalty box to prevent him from scoring. The referee sent him off, and his replacement, Hendrik Van Crombrugge, had the unenviable task of positioning himself in goal as Westerlo’s Ivorian striker lined up for a penalty kick.
A goal would make Eupen’s task significantly more difficult. A draw wasn’t enough for the Pandas. Only a win would put them in the top spot, so if Westerlo scored, that would mean they needed two goals against one of the league’s best defenses. But Van Crombrugge came up big. He dove to the right and parried the striker’s shot away from danger, prompting cheers from his teammates on the edge of the box. Eupen knew they still needed a goal, so they poured players forward, leaving them exposed to a possible counterattack. That threat turned into a reality in the 31st minute. Diawandou and several of his teammates sprinted back to stop a Westerlo fast break, but a clever through ball sliced them
open from left to right. One of Westerlo’s midfielders ran onto it at the top of the penalty box and, despite a heavy first touch, was able to nudge the ball past the onrushing keeper. It slowly rolled into the far left corner as Westerlo’s supporters erupted with joy.
Diawandou could only grimace in frustration and knew the team would have to produce something special to climb out of the hole they were in. Tintin threw on even more attacking players, but Westerlo’s defense held firm and the team continued to look threatening on the counterattack. Eupen just couldn’t find a way through, and their chance at automatic promotion faded as the minutes clicked by on the clock. Finally, the referee blew his whistle to signal the end of the match, and Westerlo’s coach jumped up and down on the sideline in glee. He may not have won the war of words with Tintin before the game, but his team was back in the first division after a two-year hiatus.
Eupen now faced a difficult four-way playoff against a pair of teams from the second division and one from the first. They would all play each other twice over a period of less than three weeks, and only the team that came out on top would move up. Winning against Westerlo would have been so much easier, but Diawandou told the team they needed to put that out of their minds. “I said, ‘We need to forget about this and just focus on the playoffs,’ ” said the Senegalese captain.
Eupen had an up and down experience during the playoffs. They only lost once in their first five matches, but twice they gave up a two-goal lead and let their opponents come back and level the score. If they had won those games, they would have gained promotion before the playoffs were even over. Instead, it once again came down to an away match on the last day. This one was against OH Leuven, the only first division team in the mix and the only side that had beaten Eupen so far in the playoffs, a 3-0 drubbing at home. Eupen now needed a tie or a win to move up, depending on what happened in the other game being played that day. Leuven was already out of contention, but both of the other teams in the playoffs still had a chance at promotion.
In many ways, Eupen’s final match day was a reprise of the one against Westerlo a few weeks earlier. Eupen supporters cheered on street corners as the team bus left town, Diawandou switched on his Quranic music to relax during the one-hour trip to Leuven, and the team entered the stadium to the roar of rival fans, who happened to be waving green and white flags rather than yellow and blue. Diawandou once again led his teammates onto the field for the start of the match in their black and white stripes, but this time it was Eupen who jumped ahead to take the lead off a corner in the seventh minute. Florian Taulemesse, a French striker who joined Eupen after playing in Spain, outjumped the defender marking him and headed the ball into the back of the net, sparking wild cheers from his teammates and their traveling fans. If Eupen could hold on to the lead, they were headed to the first division for only the second time in the team’s history.
But once again the Pandas let their opponents back into the game. Leuven equalized only five minutes later when one of its midfielders, who happened to be from Cameroon, turned in a rebound after a save from Eupen’s keeper. Even though a tie might still see Eupen go through, the team needed to score once more to guarantee promotion. Tintin again poured players forward looking for that key goal, and it finally came in the 79th minute. But it wasn’t Eupen that scored. This time it was one of Leuven’s strikers who managed to get his head on the ball and put it into the net.
Despite Eupen’s players putting everything they had into leveling the score in the game’s dying minutes, they couldn’t find a way to pierce Leuven’s defense for a second time. As it turned out, a tie wouldn’t have been enough to get them promoted anyway. One of the other teams playing that day, Royal Mouscron-Péruwelz, won their final match 4-2 and moved into the first division. Eupen’s players were crushed after having three different chances to gain promotion over the course of three weeks and coming up short each time. Tintin thought the Pandas had simply been the victim of bad luck. “If Eupen had any luck, it would be in the first division,” he said. “They were the best team that season, and it was the best season in Eupen’s history. But they still didn’t move up.”
As the season finally came to a close, the question loomed of how many Football Dreams players would stay in Eupen. Before the playoffs, the head of Aspire, Ivan Bravo, said if the team didn’t get promoted, some of the players might need to move to bigger clubs to experience a higher level of competition. But would the clubs come knocking? Diawandou had already turned down Barcelona once. The club’s scouts had been back in the stands in Eupen to monitor his progress, but had his performance been good enough for Barcelona to make a second offer?
Tintin had been experimenting with playing Diawandou in center midfield and at right back in case the club didn’t return. Barcelona was open to taking smaller central defenders, but many of the other big clubs were not. “It’s very difficult at a top European club unless you are very special,” said Tintin. “The central defenders tend to be bigger and faster.” By playing somewhere else on the field, Diawandou might expand the number of big clubs that would consider taking him. But his heart was set on Barcelona. All he could do was return to Senegal for summer break and wait to see what happened.
CHAPTER 11
Miracle Land
Bernard Appiah watched Messi hypnotize the ball with his magical left foot and scurry past yet another helpless defender. He spent a lot of time watching Messi these days, looking for inspiration, looking for hope. Both were in short supply. Bernard may have once reminded Colomer of Barcelona’s superstar, but he was now as far from emulating Messi’s success as he had ever been. The midfielder sat on a bare pink mattress on the floor of a dingy concrete room he shared with three other players in Accra. The indigo blue walls were scarred by water damage and patches of peeling paint. Sunlight filtered in through a single window, illuminating a deflated soccer ball on the ground and a couple of tattered Bibles stacked on a broken wooden chair. Bernard stared at a video of Messi on the two-inch screen of his battered cell phone. It was hard to believe he met the Argentine sensation seven years earlier. Those days had been filled with such promise. A good day now was when he could scrounge up enough money to buy something to eat after training.
It hadn’t always been so grim since Bernard had returned from Aspire in May 2010. He had been sad to leave the academy, and the dispute over his license and Aspire’s refusal to transfer him to Europe continued to sting. But when he first flew back to Ghana, he had plenty of confidence he could find another way to Europe. He moved back in with the pastors of his church, Rev. James Mensah and his wife, Agnes, and slept in a spare bedroom of their small wooden home. He swept the floors and cleaned the kitchen in the morning before going to train, just like he had done before he left for Aspire. The pastors were disappointed things hadn’t worked out for Bernard in Doha but were glad to have him back. “He knows I love him,” said Rev. Mensah’s wife. “God should have mercy on him.”
The pastors’ house was located next to their simple wooden church, Miracle Temple, with its gently sloping gable roof and fading light blue paint job. Bernard had been sweeping the floor of the church years earlier when his old coach, Justice Oteng, came to tell him a foreign scout was expected in the neighborhood to hold tryouts. When Bernard returned from Aspire, the pastors pinned a photo of him with Messi to a bulletin board at the back of the church, a reminder of what he had achieved and a symbol of the success that hopefully still lay ahead.
Missing out on making Ghana’s Under-17 national team for the playoff against Senegal in the fall of 2010 was certainly a blow, especially since Bernard and Oteng suspected the Football Dreams country director, Andy Sam, engineered the player’s exclusion. But Bernard didn’t have to wait much longer to catch the break he was looking for. A few months later, he was playing with his old team, Unique FC, on the rough dirt field at Star Park in Teshie where Colomer first spotted him in 2007. Standing on the sideline was Youssif Chibsah, a former midfielder for Ghana’
s national team who now played for a club in Sweden and was home on holiday. Just like Colomer, Chibsah was blown away by Bernard’s skill. “He is an exceptional player, very, very talented,” said Chibsah. “If you have eyes for football and for talent, you can see immediately that he has the talent.”
Chibsah was reminded of one of Ghana’s most famous players, Abedi Pele, a left-footed attacking midfielder who captained the country’s national team for a good chunk of the 1990s and happened to get his start playing in Qatar before moving to Europe. “Abedi Pele was Africa’s best during his day,” said Chibsah. “He could single-handedly change games when things weren’t going well. I thought Bernard had the same qualities and, with the proper guidance, structure, and good training, could become a player like that.”
Chibsah spoke with Oteng and offered to introduce Bernard to a friend, Wilhelm Myrer, who had connections with clubs in Norway and Sweden. Oteng agreed after negotiating what he could never get from Aspire, a percentage of the proceeds if Bernard became a star. Chibsah spoke with Bernard as well and liked what he heard. “He was full of confidence,” said Chibsah. “There was no doubt that this was someone I wanted to help.” Bernard was reenergized and hoped this was the ticket to Europe that eluded him at the academy. Nothing would be sweeter than making the jump after everyone at Aspire told him it was impossible until he turned 18. “When I came back, I did not give up,” said Bernard. “I was praying to God that God would give me another chance. I came back, and God was good.”
The Away Game Page 22
