The Away Game

by Sebastian Abbot

  Oteng viewed Bernard as his only real chance to turn the tide. By his estimate, he had spent thousands of dollars on his teams over nearly a decade, using cash from his small welding business and getting help from his church to fill the gaps. Oteng had never been able to sell a player for much money and didn’t have any others like Bernard. The coach was convinced the midfielder was his ticket to making back what he had spent and earning a tidy profit on top. At least that’s how he felt before a showdown with Aspire at the Coconut Grove Hotel in Accra in the fall of 2009. After that, everything changed.

  It all started when the Football Dreams country director in Ghana, Andy Sam, contacted Oteng to say Aspire wanted Bernard’s license. The request came as a surprise to the coach. When Aspire first selected Bernard, Oteng’s understanding was that the academy wasn’t interested in owning the players and simply wanted to help them achieve their dream of becoming professionals. After all, Aspire repeatedly said Football Dreams wasn’t a money-making scheme. Now that Oteng was hearing something different, he was suspicious Sam was trying to profit from Bernard personally.

  Sam said Aspire simply needed to protect itself and the investment it was making in the players. The country director estimated the academy spent around 1 million euros on each of the Football Dreams kids it trained. It’s unclear why Aspire waited until 2009 to ask for Bernard’s license, but the scholarship agreement the player signed in 2008 when he first joined the academy indicated Aspire was interested in his license all along. It stipulated that Bernard agree to register and transfer his rights to any team chosen by Aspire in Qatar, Ghana, or elsewhere. But the agreement was co-signed by Bernard’s father, not Oteng.

  The coach told Sam he would only hand over the license if they drafted an agreement saying he would benefit when Bernard was finally sold to a club. Major academies in Africa usually offer local coaches a few hundred dollars for a player plus 5 to 10 percent of his future value when he’s sold, and Oteng demanded something similar. But Aspire didn’t want to share any future windfall, a curious position for an academy backed by one of the richest countries in the world and adamant that Football Dreams was a humanitarian program meant to help grassroots soccer in Africa. Sam told Oteng the academy was willing to give him around $1,000 for Bernard’s license, but the coach balked, convinced he was being cheated. To resolve the issue, Sam suggested Oteng bring Bernard’s parents to a meeting at a hotel in an upscale neighborhood of Accra so they could discuss the matter face-to-face.

  The Coconut Grove was Sam’s turf. He often conducted Football Dreams business at wooden tables set up next to the pool in the hotel’s courtyard. Traditional African masks stare out from the courtyard walls, and the pool’s tile floor is decorated with an image of a large palm tree heavy with coconuts. It’s far from the only palm tree in the joint. Hundreds more cover the shirts of hotel staff serving Star beer and Bacardi rum to guests by the pool. The atmosphere may have been a bit kitsch, but it was far nicer than the places Oteng spent his time in Teshie. This was no meeting of equals, and home field advantage put Sam even farther on the front foot.

  To help level the playing field, Oteng arrived at the hotel with backup. The coach may have been a bit player in the country’s soccer scene but managed to convince the chairman of the Ghana Football Association’s Disciplinary Committee, Farouck Seidu, that he was being taken advantage of and persuaded him to come along. As they made their way through the lobby to the poolside table where Sam was sitting, Oteng was surprised to see the country director had brought his own backup. Seated next to him was Colomer, who knew plenty about hammering out deals for potential young stars. Colomer was in town for the latest Football Dreams tryouts, and Oteng believed he had come to press Aspire’s case. (Aspire later denied that Colomer had attended the meeting at all, despite statements to the contrary by Oteng, Seidu, and Bernard’s parents.)

  Bernard’s parents arrived at the meeting separately in one of Accra’s battered black and yellow taxis and joined the others around the table. Bernard, the center of attention, was missing because he had already returned to Doha after the end of his summer vacation. Oteng spoke to him by phone beforehand and convinced him Sam wasn’t to be trusted. Bernard agreed the coach shouldn’t hand over his license unless the country director agreed in writing to his demands. Since Oteng wasn’t sharing in the money Aspire sent to Bernard’s parents, he wanted to make sure the coach properly benefited from the value of his license.

  Sam did most of the talking in the meeting, and it was clear from the outset that Aspire didn’t plan on changing its position. The country director told Oteng it was the best deal his little neighborhood soccer operation was going to get. “I asked them, ‘How much money have you earned in the past five years? Is it anywhere near $1,000?’ ” said Sam. “If you don’t want it, no problem, take it or leave it, we’ll just put somebody [else] in there. If you don’t take it, there are 10 other boys who are good enough.” According to Oteng, Colomer didn’t speak much, but it seemed clear that Sam had his support.

  Oteng refused to budge on his demands and was backed by the lawyer Seidu, who felt $1,000 was peanuts for a player of Bernard’s caliber. “I said, ‘What? You are joking. You want to take the player and pay this amount? If you ask me as a lawyer, I would say no,’ ” said Seidu. Someone brought up Colomer’s role in jump-starting Messi’s career to convince Oteng and Seidu to change their minds. “They were trying to give us confidence that if this man has something to do with Messi, then we can be sure he can help Bernard,” Seidu later said. “I said, ‘Well, it’s true, but not for peanuts.’ ”

  The discussion around the table at the Coconut Grove was a far cry from the big money negotiations over superstars like Messi and Ronaldo, but to Oteng, the outcome was just as important. He suspected Sam requested the meeting with Bernard’s parents under the assumption they would support Aspire to keep the player in the academy. It was clear that Aspire was light-years ahead of anything Bernard could find in Ghana, but Oteng thought he was talented enough that he would be able to find another way to Europe if he had to leave the academy.

  The coach said Aspire’s arm-twisting at the Coconut Grove failed because Bernard’s parents supported him instead of the academy, thanks to the years he spent raising and training the player. But Bernard’s father, Noah Appiah, tells a different story. He said he and his wife had no idea what the meeting was about when Oteng asked them to come to the Coconut Grove and weren’t aware there was a conflict over Bernard’s license. They stayed quiet as the argument played out at the hotel, but Bernard’s father said he told Oteng after the meeting he should give Aspire the license so Bernard could stay in the academy. Noah Appiah had visited Aspire twice since his son went to Doha, so he knew exactly what was at stake. But he didn’t push the issue when Oteng disagreed, especially since Bernard was supporting his coach.

  Back in Doha, John Benson sensed something was wrong. He was in class with Bernard and made one of his regular jokes about the player’s lousy English. “Before when I did this, he would laugh,” said John. “But he wasn’t laughing.” John asked what was wrong, and Bernard said he might have to leave the academy and return home because of a dispute over his license.

  It was the spring of 2010, several months after the showdown at the Coconut Grove. According to Oteng, Sam told him after the meeting Bernard would have to leave Aspire because the coach refused to hand over his license, but the player stayed at the academy for a few more months until his father signed a termination agreement and so he could finish out his school year. “Oteng called me and said this is what Andy Sam has done, so I have to come back home,” said Bernard. “I was very sad. Everybody at Aspire was very sad.”

  Sam insisted Aspire never forced Bernard out, even though he clearly took a hard line in the meeting at the Coconut Grove. He said Bernard decided to leave himself over frustration that the academy wouldn’t transfer him to Europe. “Bernard thought he had arrived even at that age,” said Sam. “I use
d to tell Colomer he ought to be very careful the things he says to some of these kids. It goes to their head.” In reality, it may have been a combination of both issues that led to Bernard’s departure. The player was indeed frustrated that Aspire wouldn’t send him to Europe, and the conflict over his license may have been the final straw, persuading Bernard and his coach they were better off trying their luck elsewhere than agreeing to the academy’s demands. (Aspire officials in Doha confirmed that they didn’t renew Bernard’s scholarship but refused to provide details, citing legal reasons.)

  Whatever the reason for Bernard’s departure, he was on his way out. Less than three years after Colomer stood in the dirt at Star Park in Teshie watching a player who reminded him of Messi, the midfielder waited outside Aspire for a car to take him to Doha airport. Bernard had put on a brave face saying goodbye to his friends at the academy, but now his eyes welled with tears. Colomer had predicted Bernard would become a star, but he wasn’t catching a flight to Barcelona or Manchester. One of the brightest diamonds discovered by Football Dreams was headed back to the mine where he was found. It wasn’t the path anyone had imagined for Bernard when he arrived at Aspire. That first trip was filled with such hope, the fulfillment of a childhood dream that soccer would whisk him away from the life he knew in Ghana. He never anticipated it would be a round-trip and now faced the uncertainty of finding another way out.

  Bernard’s departure was a clear indication that Football Dreams was even more challenging than the organizers had imagined. Scouring the African continent for those few players who can blossom into future stars was hard enough, but that was just the beginning of the equation. Managing the players’ hopes and frustrations along the way could be just as difficult, especially in an environment as foreign as Qatar with staff who knew plenty about professional soccer but relatively little about the nuance of dealing with players from Africa.

  Not long after Bernard left Aspire, the academy abandoned its plan to host Football Dreams kids in Qatar altogether. Officials sent the players from the first two classes who had been placed in Doha to the academy run by Colomer in Senegal. That didn’t go down well with Hamza, Adama, and John Felagha, who had become accustomed to the world-class facilities on offer at Aspire in Doha. They nicknamed the academy in Senegal “Baghdad” to express their displeasure with their newfound surroundings. Hamza was even sent home for several months at one point as punishment for being so difficult. “There were times when Colomer was so frustrated he wanted to kick him out of the academy,” said Sam.

  Aspire said it stopped hosting the Football Dreams kids in Qatar because they had little, if any, impact on improving the local players, although some of the coaches in Doha, disagreed, including Michael Browne. Andreas Bleicher, the German who helped launch Football Dreams, also said the African players struggled with the country’s language and culture and ended up getting homesick. He said it was difficult to integrate them into the academy’s school given that some of them had problems with basic reading and writing, meaning they had to craft individual programs for the boys. But the kids themselves said they were generally happy at the academy in Doha and were clearly upset when they had to move to Senegal. The difficulty of schooling the kids shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise since Aspire had three African players at the academy before it launched Football Dreams.

  In fact, Aspire kept two of those players, Serigne Abdou Thiam and Antoine Messi, in Doha even after it sent the Football Dreams kids to Senegal. The third, John Benson, had already graduated. Serigne Abdou ended up playing a key role on the Qatari national team that won the Under-19 AFC championship for the first time in 2014, although it’s unclear how he joined the squad without violating FIFA rules on naturalization.

  Could it be that hosting the Football Dreams kids in Qatar made less sense after FIFA made it more difficult to naturalize them for the country’s national team? Aspire denies that was a factor in its decision, but it’s easy to see how placing the players off-limits could have made the hassle of keeping them in Doha seem less worthwhile and help explain the radical decision to abandon the original aim of Football Dreams.

  Regardless, the success or failure of Football Dreams now rested on Colomer’s satellite academy in Senegal. Could he produce a superstar to help justify the millions spent on the project and cast glory on Qatar in the process? The loss of Bernard was clearly a blow, but Colomer was grooming a new star, Ibrahima Dramé, the towering striker found in the sleepy Senegalese town where he first came up with the idea for Football Dreams. The “serial killer,” some called him, because his finishing was so deadly. Ibrahima was scoring goals by the bucketload, and in the currency of professional soccer, there’s nothing more valuable than that.

  CHAPTER 7

  Brothers

  Ibrahima was on a hat trick. Twice already, he had glided past Diawandou and put the ball in the back of the net. Now he was knocking on the door yet again. One of Ibrahima’s teammates threaded a pass through the defense, and the ball was set up perfectly for him to run onto it and notch his third goal of the match. But Diawandou was fed up. Not only was Ibrahima the new guy in town, but they were also on Diawandou’s turf. Colomer had set up his Football Dreams satellite operation on the grounds of Diawandou’s old academy in Thiès. With its patchy grass fields and aging concrete buildings, it was a far cry from the academy in Doha but would have to do until Colomer could come up with a better solution. The Spanish scout brought Ibrahima and a handful of other players he found during the second year of Football Dreams to Thiès in the fall of 2008 so they could train for a few months before going to the final in Qatar.

  Colomer wanted to see how they stacked up against the first class of kids he discovered, and Ibrahima quickly attracted the spotlight—a little too quickly, in Diawandou’s mind. He figured now was the time to teach him a lesson, to remind him that the players around him were also among Africa’s best and this wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. As Ibrahima ran onto the ball, his long strides eating up the ground, Diawandou timed his tackle. He could have swept the ball away, but that wasn’t his goal. That wouldn’t have sent a strong enough message. He swung his foot in and took out Ibrahima’s legs, sending him tumbling to the ground and injuring the striker’s ankle in the process. He would be out for three weeks. Sprawled on the field, Ibrahima was outraged. “I screamed at Diawandou in Wolof, ‘Why did you do this? We are the same! We are brothers!’ ”

  Ibrahima was half right. They would become brothers, but they weren’t the same. Both were from Senegal, but Ibrahima’s childhood in Ziguinchor was a far cry from the comfortable middle-class upbringing Diawandou experienced in Thiès. Even though Ibrahima’s brother Sekou dropped out of school at the age of 12 to work at Ziguinchor’s port, the family was still struggling to make ends meet. That’s what drove Sekou to consider taking a life-threatening journey across the ocean to Spain to find a better job. Ibrahima had persuaded him not to go, saying the family’s life would change if he made it into the academy. That meant he had a serious weight on his shoulders as he took his first-ever flight to attend the final tryout in Doha at the beginning of 2009.

  But Ibrahima was still brimming with his trademark confidence. His uncle and coach, Amadou Traoré, accompanied him to Qatar for the first week of the final, and when Traoré left to return to Senegal, Ibrahima told him, “Sleep well, I will succeed.” Due to injury, the striker missed the most memorable game of the tryout, a 7-0 thrashing of one of AC Milan’s youth teams. The result indicated the kind of talent Colomer had assembled in the second Football Dreams class. But even among this group, Ibrahima stood out once he recovered from his injury. “He was a player you would never forget,” said Michael Browne, Aspire’s head soccer coach. “You watch him at times and think, ‘What’s he doing?’ and then all of a sudden he would get it and he would put it in the net from anywhere.”

  Ibrahima was desperate to be one of the few kids chosen to stay in Qatar. Having seen both the academy in Thiès and
Aspire’s facilities in Doha, there was no question in his mind about the best place for him to train to become a European star. But Browne wasn’t just looking for the most talented players to stay in Doha. He was also focused on filling gaps in the academy team at Aspire. If a squad already had a promising Qatari striker, he didn’t want to insert an even better African who would challenge the local for playing time. Unfortunately for Ibrahima, that meant he was headed to Senegal. “If you were selecting the best players, I would have taken him,” said Browne.

  Ibrahima didn’t realize that and was upset about not making the cut. “I wanted to be among the best,” said Ibrahima. “I wanted to be able to keep my head up.” But not everyone thought it was a bad result. Over the course of the tryout, Ibrahima had grown close to a Senegalese doctor who worked with Football Dreams, Babacar Ngom. Even before the final was over, he told the striker he would actually be better off in Senegal. “He said, ‘Qatar is nice, it’s beautiful, but if you sit in Doha, you cannot improve your football,’ ” said Ibrahima. “ ‘Because here in Doha you can eat, you can sleep, you can have everything, but you cannot fight because you don’t have the boys who are good. You have to go to Senegal to fight for your future because all of the black boys are there at the academy.’ ” Ibrahima wasn’t entirely convinced because Aspire was so spectacular, but he was certainly determined to fight wherever the academy put him.

  Colomer wasn’t satisfied with Diawandou’s old academy in Thiès, either, and moved the Football Dreams kids to much nicer digs in the fall of 2009, a year after starting his satellite operation in Senegal. Aspire began renting half of Diambars, an academy opened in the small coastal resort town of Saly in 2000 by several prominent Senegalese players, including Patrick Viera, who became a legend at Arsenal and ended up winning the World Cup with France in 1998. Diambars still fell far short of Aspire in Doha, but as one of the nicest academies in West Africa, it was a significant improvement over the facility in Thiès. As one Football Dreams player put it, “Doha is five stars, Senegal three stars.”