Although it is, of course, impossible to pinpoint the first time an African in what would become Portuguese imperial territory kicked a soccer ball, or even something approximating one, it’s quite possible that she or he enjoyed it. If Africans in the colonies eagerly consumed metropolitan soccer happenings, they just as zealously played the sport, increasingly generating their own noteworthy footballing developments. Africans’ enthusiastic engagement with the game grew largely in parallel to the expansion of soccer within the European settler communities: these two groups of practitioners were segregated by the administrative policies that demarcated colonial spaces along racial lines. Following the introduction of soccer in Portugal’s African empire, decades would pass before the racial boundaries that divided these footballing worlds dissipated, enabling blacks and whites in the colonies to play against and with one another.
Well before this integrative process eroded these sporting barriers, Africans resourcefully formed their own clubs and associations, organizationally mimicking the Europeans-only leagues and adhering to the rules and regulations of the game as initially conveyed to them. However, they also developed their own “creolized” styles and dynamics of play. In this manner, and in many other ways, Africans appropriated the game—making it their own, filling it with new meanings, and infusing it with a performative dimension devoid of the European version of the sport. Later, though, as talented African players began to join traditionally whites-only clubs, to achieve success they would have to conform to the prevailing tactics and approaches advocated by the array of Portuguese coaches in the colonies. Local observers bemoaned the resultant disappearance of indigenous styles of play, as footballing panache became one of many casualties of the mounting emphasis on victory above all else.
In response to a range of external pressures and administrative calculations, the various governments in the Portuguese colonies eventually incorporated the African associations into the longer-established European leagues. In turn, the elite colonial clubs newly began recruiting large numbers of talented black and mestiço (mulatto) players. On these racially integrated squads, African footballers forged meaningful friendships across racial lines, united by their athletic acumen and common sporting cause. Yet, for all of their social and sporting success, players’ salaries remained nominal. In the absence of living wages for squad members, colonial soccer teams attracted skilled footballers by arranging for employment either directly with club patrons or through associated commercial networks. By engaging in remunerative work in mixed-race environments, players both contributed to household finances and sharpened their social integration skills. And, perhaps most importantly, they also developed labor strategies that many of them would subsequently apply in the metropole in creative and innovative ways to facilitate their long-term success, both on and away from the pitch.
This chapter examines the various ways that, over time, Africans in the colonies played the game—from the dusty neighborhood matches to the downtown leagues—and traces the social and economic impacts of this evolving engagement. Although indigenous practitioners formed “native” clubs and associations and some of these footballers eventually joined formerly Europeans-only clubs, Africans never stopped playing informally in seemingly every available space, reflecting the game’s steadily expanding popularity. In these modest sites, local cultural emphases and creativity blended with a rejective spirit to produce novel playing styles and approaches that proved remarkably durable in the bairros (neighborhoods) in which they were conceived and cultivated. Conversely, African players who ascended the tiers of colonial soccerdom were forced to abandon former modes in order to continue to realize footballing and, ultimately, financial success. This chapter examines their shifting engagement with the sport as soccer in the colonies steadily became something much more than just a game.
Playing the Game: Informal Engagements
It appears that football was initially introduced in Portugal’s African colonies sometime during the end of the nineteenth century. Regardless of the exact date, by the early twentieth century, the sport had gained significant traction. In Mozambique, for example, by 1904 matches were already being organized, while local teams were apparently challenging the crews of ships docked at Lourenço Marques.1 In explaining Africans’ initial receptiveness toward the game, scholars have emphasized the strong relationships and linkages between soccer and precolonial martial and athletic traditions, especially those that featured a ritualized space in which to perform.2 John Bale and Joe Sang have argued that these indigenous customs and associated notions of masculinity constituted the “soil into which the seeds of European sport would later be planted.”3 In the Lusophone African context, precolonial traditions and competitions of this nature helped fuel soccer’s initial appeal, as well as its eventual widespread popularity. In the following section, I examine the ways that African practitioners began engaging with the sport and trace these fundamental, often rudimentary, forms of participation over time.
Peladas and Makeshift Balls
In the Global North, images abound of barefoot Africans kicking around improvised spherical objects on uneven patches of dusty land bookended by makeshift goals. Although these images are somewhat misleading—formal soccer venues of all sizes can be found throughout the continent—virtually every one of today’s elite African footballers learned the sport by playing on exactly the types of scruffy pitches that fill Western imaginations. Not surprisingly, African practitioners in Portugal’s colonies commenced their engagement with the sport in similar fashion, often playing without a proper ball, or even shoes, as they partook in pickup games, or peladas.4 Into the waning decades of Portugal’s empire, these austere conditions persisted; indeed, each and every footballer who was talented enough to play in the metropole initially developed his skills in these humble spaces.
Unable to afford proper soccer balls, participants in neighborhood peladas instead fashioned makeshift balls from whatever materials were available: rags, socks, women’s stockings, and even the innards of animals. According to Calton Banze, who grew up in the Chamanculo neighborhood of Lourenço Marques in the 1960s, “We had to make the balls. Socks, rags, plastic, elastic—these were the materials we used. And I shouldn’t forget the stomach of an ox, which was already a ball. I also remember a tennis ball that somebody brought, already too old to use for tennis any longer. We also used inner tubes stolen from bicycles.”5 Although players continued to craft these improvised balls through the end of the colonial period, and beyond, in the 1960s, a rubber company headquartered in the Mozambican capital introduced the Facobol. This development improved the quality of innumerable neighborhood contests; yet, for most practitioners, the cost, though minimal, of the revolutionary ball rendered it out of reach. As such, the rubber Facobol quickly became a status symbol, separating those players with sufficient means, however limited, from those for whom the purchase of even this reasonably priced item was cost-prohibitive.
If African footballers weren’t discouraged by the lack of a proper ball, the absence of athletic footwear—or shoes of any sort—similarly did little to temper their enthusiasm. Because footwear was not historically customary in many African communities, this apparent problem was, in fact, not an issue at all. But over time, as colonial fashion influenced local sartorial styles, the practice of wearing shoes became increasingly widespread, especially in cities, the loci of soccer engagement and development. Still, neighborhood football remained an almost universally shoeless endeavor. Even when games in the bairros were better organized and local teams were formed, players rarely donned footwear. As Eusébio recalled in 2004: “It is normal in Africa, even today, for the kids to play barefoot in their neighborhood teams. When we played for our local team, we never had boots or shoes.”6
White players who lived and played in the neighborhoods similarly participated in these sans-shoes affairs, though not always for exactly the same reasons. According to Ernesto Baltazar, a white Mozambican hailing from a poor family who grew up playing alongside Eusébio and other future talents deriving from the colony, “We [Eusébio and I] played soccer barefoot. I had sneakers, but if I arrived home with dirty sneakers, I was in trouble. In the beginning, I removed the sneakers and played with socks. My socks were dirty and pierced; my mother ordered