The Away Game

  THE

  AWAY

  GAME

  The Epic Search for

  Soccer’s Next Superstars

  Sebastian Abbot

  W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

  Independent Publishers Since 1923

  New York London

  To my wife Liz,

  the best teammate ever

  And my brother Spencer,

  who left us far too soon

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One BOYS

  1. The Tornado

  2. The Skipper

  3. The Target

  Part Two TRAINEES

  4. The Academy

  5. Final Tryout

  6. Sent Off

  7. Brothers

  8. Glory and Shame

  9. The Milk Cup

  Part Three PROS

  10. Battle of Belgium

  11. Miracle Land

  12. Only the Beginning

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  A Note on Sources

  Photograph Credits

  Index

  Prologue

  Josep Colomer knows soccer. He started his first training center when he was just a teenager in Spain, helped Brazil’s coaching staff win the World Cup in 2002, and rose to become youth director of soccer juggernaut FC Barcelona. He also helped jump-start the career of one of the greatest players in history, Lionel Messi.

  Colomer knows markedly less about Nigerian militants. For example, they hate being called militants. They much prefer the term “freedom fighters.” Not surprisingly, Colomer never ran into a Nigerian militant during his years working as a scout and coach at the pinnacle of international soccer. But now he stood on a weathered dock in Nigeria’s turbulent Niger Delta. A small gray Yamaha motorboat floated nearby on a carpet of green water hyacinths. One of its passengers was Clemente Konboye, a Nigerian militant with a potbelly, a missing front tooth, and an intimidating air. His eyes were fixed on Colomer.

  He wasn’t the only one staring. All around the ramshackle boat launch in Warri, one of the main cities in Delta State, locals working out of rusty metal shacks and battered motorboats stopped to ponder the squat, bald bulldog of a man in his late 30s. As usual, he looked like he was headed to the gym. Colomer always seemed to be dressed in a T-shirt, soccer shorts, and running shoes. Warri was no different. No attempt to blend in here.

  The summer of 2007 certainly wasn’t the safest time to be a foreigner standing on a dock in the Niger Delta. The militants’ fight for a greater share of the impoverished region’s vast oil wealth was at its peak. Armed with AK-47s and RPGs, the militants raced about in small motorboats attacking government forces and kidnapping foreign oil workers. They eluded capture by speeding off into the labyrinth of waterways and mangrove forests that dominated the area. Many of them, including Konboye, followed a colorful leader known as Tompolo, who helped found the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. His gang started the trend of targeting foreigners for ransom in 2006 by kidnapping nine oil workers from a barge stationed near the small fishing town of Ogulagha, where Tompolo’s mother lived. Colomer also happened to be headed to Ogulagha on that cloudy August afternoon in 2007. Konboye was at the dock because he and his fellow militants had been tipped off. But he wasn’t there to kidnap Colomer. He was there to protect him.

  Colomer wasn’t interested in the Niger Delta’s oil. He wasn’t drawn to Africa in search of diamonds or gold, the kind of spoils that had long brought foreigners to the continent’s shores and interior. He had no interest in what was underneath Africa’s soil. He was hoping to find his prize on top of it. It could be next to a highway in Nigeria’s teeming megacity, Lagos, or on a sparsely populated island in the Niger Delta. It could be anywhere really. That was just one of the many difficulties he faced.

  Knowing exactly what to look for was also a challenge. The process was more art than science. Science can easily tell you whether you’ve found gold or diamonds, but the answers are much less definitive in Colomer’s line of work. Experts have long relied on intuition drawn from years of experience rather than hard data, although that is slowly shifting. Either way, it can take years to reveal whether you actually found what you were looking for. But if you’re successful, the accolades are global. Forget oil and diamonds, Colomer was in Africa pursuing something much rarer. He was looking for the next Messi.

  The trip to Ogulagha was one of hundreds that Colomer and his team of scouts made across the African continent in 2007 as they launched what may be the biggest talent search in sports history. In that year alone, Colomer’s team held tryouts for more than 400,000 boys in seven African countries looking for soccer’s next superstars, and that was just the beginning. They eventually expanded the search, named “Football Dreams,” to over three dozen countries in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia and held tryouts for more than 5 million kids. Each year, the scouts chose a handful of the best players and trained them to become professionals at a special academy. To call these kids elite would be an understatement. The process was over a thousand times more selective than getting into Harvard.

  The scouts targeted 13-year-old boys so academy coaches would have enough time to shape them into potential world beaters by the time they graduated at the age of 18. To put the figures into perspective, the average number of kids they scouted each year, roughly 500,000, was greater than the total population of 13-year-old boys in almost every country in the FIFA top 20. In some cases, it was over 10 times larger. Imagine what you would find if you scouted every 13-year-old boy in Argentina, Germany, or France, every single year. Call up images of young Messi, Pelé, Beckenbauer, or Zidane. That’s the kind of talent Colomer hoped to find when he set off in 2007. But he wasn’t looking in Europe or South America, at least not at first. Even when he expanded his search to a few countries in Latin America and Asia, his primary focus continued to be Africa.

  The Spanish writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán once described soccer as “a religion in search of a God.” Nowhere is that more true than Africa. There might be a few countries in the east known more for their world-class runners, but soccer is worshipped almost everywhere else with unbending faith, especially by the continent’s children. Their backgrounds and places of worship are almost always humble, but they still dream of becoming gods.

  If you walk along the corniche in Senegal’s capital of Dakar and gaze down from the rocky cliffs, you’ll see dozens of barefoot men and boys on a narrow strip of beach battling in the late afternoon like it’s a Champions League final. Dressed in knockoff jerseys from their favorite European teams, they fire the ball at their version of a goal, a pair of old tires half buried in the sand. It’s a race against time to see how long they can play before the incoming tide washes away their pitch, although the water is by no means out of bounds. They run into the ocean and flick the ball out of ankle-deep water with consummate skill, their bodies silhouetted against the setting sun.

  Scenes like this abound across the African landscape. In the continent’s increasingly crowded cities, kids squeeze into whatever space they can find to grab a game. They set up bamboo goals under a busy highway overpass in Lagos. They weave around sharp-edged tombstones in a red dirt cemetery in Accra. They apologize for overturning plates of small red tomatoes and blackened fried fish in a busy Abidjan market. Kids living in Africa’s vast rural areas have it a bit easier, at least when it comes to finding a patch of sand to call their own. But then there’s the issue of coming up with a ball. Kids often make do with whatever they have: a wad of plastic bags tied together with string, a bundle of clothes, or an empty water bottle.

  The conditions might be basic, but the touch, instinct, and athletic ability young African players d
evelop through thousands of hours of practice can be otherworldly. In fact, researchers believe it’s precisely these kinds of pickup games that help make Brazilian players so good. They train the body, but even more important, they transform the brain. The number of hours spent playing with friends in the street or on a patch of sand has proven to be a key factor in whether a player can cut it at the professional level.

  It’s no surprise then that Africa has produced some of Europe’s biggest soccer stars in recent years, including Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o and Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba and Yaya Toure. European clubs have relied on African players since the colonial era, but the number migrating to Europe and elsewhere has ballooned over the past 20 years as money has poured into professional soccer and the sport has become increasingly globalized. Africans now make up nearly 10 percent of the players in England’s Premier League and have spread to every other major league across the globe, including Major League Soccer in the United States. Clubs have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire the best African players, and prices have been spiking. The Senegalese forward Sadio Mané became the most expensive African player in history in 2016 when Liverpool paid 34 million pounds to acquire him from Southampton.

  Colomer believed that the African players making headlines were just the tip of a massive iceberg of talent and that much of the continent remained overlooked. By casting a wide enough net across Africa, he believed he could uncover players who could become soccer’s next superstars. That’s why he was standing on a dock in the Niger Delta in August 2007.

  But things weren’t going as planned. The trouble started as soon as Colomer pulled up to the dock and got out of his Toyota SUV with the two paramilitary police officers armed with AK-47s who were protecting him. The policemen had been arranged by Colonel Sam Ahmedu, a retired army officer who served as the Football Dreams country director in Nigeria. Colomer and the other European scouts who were part of the program had taken police with them everywhere they went in Nigeria as a precautionary measure. But their man on the ground in Warri, Austin Bekewei, knew that wasn’t going to be possible in Ogulagha. The militants would never allow armed government forces into their territory. He was keenly aware of that because he was from Ogulagha and knew many of the militants personally, including Konboye, who was standing beside him when Colomer arrived at the boat launch.

  Bekewei was a good decade younger than Colomer and now faced the unenviable task of telling him he couldn’t bring police to guard him as he traveled to one of the most dangerous parts of the Delta. He also needed to convince Colomer that Konboye would provide protection and return him to Warri unharmed. He had spoken to Konboye and his fellow militants beforehand, who assured him they had no problem with Colomer’s visit. The residents of Ogulagha wanted him to come because they saw it as the only chance for their kids to showcase their skills. They had never even had a Nigerian scout visit, much less a European one who had worked at the pinnacle of world soccer and helped nurture one of the best players in history.

  Colomer wasn’t the one who found Messi in Argentina and then brought him to Barcelona. The future star first arrived at the club as a shy, skinny 13-year-old in September 2000, over two years before Colomer became Barcelona’s youth director. But Messi’s meteoric rise was thanks in part to Colomer’s guidance and confidence in the young player. Soon after arriving, Colomer promoted Messi four levels at once to put him on Barcelona’s reserve squad, something that had never happened before at the club. A few months later, in November 2003, Colomer had the pleasure of telling a shaggy-haired, 16-year-old Messi that he would be getting his first chance to play with Barcelona’s senior team. “He told me that I should just go and enjoy the game and the experience,” Messi told the club’s TV channel on the 10th anniversary of his debut.

  It was an experience neither would ever forget, and the two remained close even after Colomer left Barcelona. Messi forever appreciated the support at such a critical point in his career, and Colomer cherished the experience of nurturing one of the game’s greatest players. Perhaps he would do it again with Football Dreams, but first he had to decide whether to get in a boat with a Nigerian militant.

  Bekewei, Colomer, and his police guards huddled on the dock discussing the situation. Bekewei pledged that nobody would harm Colomer but was more concerned than he let on. He knew he couldn’t totally control what happened during the one-hour boat ride from Warri through the creeks to Ogulagha. The militants in his hometown had given their word, but what about other groups in between? There was largely no cell phone service out on the water, so they would be on their own if something happened. It was a risk Bekewei was willing to take. He was a budding soccer agent himself and knew Colomer’s visit would give local players exposure and boost his standing in the community.

  The police protested that the situation was just too dangerous, prompting Colomer to make a frantic call to Ahmedu to see whether he should get in the boat. The colonel assured him he would be the safest person on the island because the locals wanted him to hold the tryout. In fact, Ahmedu told Colomer he was safer with the militants than the police. “I said, ‘Coach, you have two policemen. They have arms, maybe 40 rounds of ammunition. They cannot match the youths, so already it’s a risk being there. Since they’re cooperating and saying they’ll protect you, don’t worry,’ ” said Ahmedu.

  What the colonel didn’t tell Colomer or anyone else is that he already had a Plan B in place. He normally worked with the state security service to send intelligence officers ahead of the scouts to assess an area the day before the scouts arrived. Sometimes they dressed as soccer players and headed to the field the scout would visit to see if they got wind of plans to harm him. That wasn’t possible in Ogulagha because of the risk that they would be discovered. Ahmedu instead spoke with his contacts in the military who arranged for a quick-reaction force to stand by in case anything happened. The soldiers would jump into a speedboat armed with a massive submachine gun and race after Colomer if needed. He also thought about getting a pair of satellite phones so he could communicate with Colomer while he was on the water, but Bekewei advised him against it. “Those kids are smart, and when they see you with sophisticated equipment, they begin to think you are a spy,” said Ahmedu.

  It’s fair to say most people faced with Colomer’s situation would say thank you for the opportunity, get back into the Toyota SUV, and get out of there. But Colomer had been obsessed with looking for undiscovered talent ever since he was a teenager growing up in the small medieval town of Vic, north of Barcelona. He spent weekends there searching for skilled young players for his fledgling soccer school while his friends partied and chased girls. If there was anyone who was going to get in a boat with a Nigerian militant on the chance that the world’s next soccer star was living in a small fishing town in the Niger Delta, it was Colomer. And that’s precisely what he did. He was scared but followed Bekewei and Konboye down the dock and stepped into the motorboat that was waiting for him. As the driver pulled away, careful not to tangle the propeller in the floating water hyacinths, Colomer looked out toward the Forcados River that would take him to Ogulagha. He wondered what he would find when he arrived, and who would find him.

  The boat quickly picked up speed as it left the dock, and they were soon moving so quickly that the muddy water whizzed by like a solid dirt road. Colomer sat on a small white cushion next to the outboard motor, his right arm resting on the side of the boat. The look on his face was tense. A seemingly impenetrable green wall of mangroves and palm trees dominated both sides of the river, which was only about a hundred feet wide at times. Narrow creeks occasionally branched off on either side, but mostly there was nowhere to escape if they ran into trouble. The buzz of the motor was so loud that even basic communication was difficult.

  The river widened to several hundred feet as they neared Ogulagha and passed the massive Forcados oil terminal on their left. Visible in the distance were several circular white oil tanks the size of larg
e buildings. They were a small part of a sprawling complex operated by Shell that had the capacity to export about 400,000 barrels of crude a day. It was a popular target for militants. They had attacked the terminal’s loading platform on the same day in 2006 that they had kidnapped nine foreign oil workers from a barge near Ogulagha in military-style predawn raids.

  Immediately after passing the terminal, the boat pulled up to Ogulagha, a jumble of mostly dilapidated wood and metal shacks perched on the sandy bank of the river. The town’s poverty stood in stark contrast to the wealth represented by the Shell terminal next door. As the boat approached the riverbank, a group of teenage boys walked toward them through the shallow water. One of them was wearing a red and white striped soccer jersey.

  “Good afternoon,” Colomer said calmly, without revealing any apprehension he may have felt. “Are you football players? Are you ready to play?”

  “Yes,” they said. “We are ready.”

  But they weren’t striding toward the boat because they were interested in soccer. They wanted something else from Colomer: a tip. The kids normally offered to carry passengers to the bank on their backs so they wouldn’t get their shoes wet. In return, they hoped for a few Nigerian naira. But Colomer wasn’t worried about wet feet. “He just jumped into the water with his tennis shoes on,” said Bekewei. “That’s to show the commitment. He was ready.”

  Bekewei and Konboye led Colomer from the riverbank into the heart of town, following dirt paths that snaked through Ogulagha. A couple dozen kids trailed behind them, curious about the white man who had made such an unexpected visit. Most of the buildings they passed were rusty shacks made out of corrugated metal that reached baking temperatures during the hottest months. They crossed makeshift wooden bridges over small canals clogged with trash. The air was filled with the pungent odor of frying fish, one of the main staples in Ogulagha.