Following the Ball. Todd Cleveland

faithful disciples of the game. Ultimately, African players would have to curb these crowd-pleasing displays in favor of a more subdued, disciplined approach in order to continue their footballing ascension.

       Imitative Leagues

      The leagues formed by African patrons, coaches, and players resembled the Europeans-only leagues in their organizational structure but were, divergently, very poorly funded. Local elites, who were often, though not exclusively, assimilados (assimilateds), generally bankrolled the clubs and covered the leagues’ administrative expenses, though the players themselves typically derived from lower social strata.³⁰ Alegi has attributed the development of these leagues elsewhere in Africa to “wage-earning urban workers with some Western education—men with discretionary income and leisure time.” But his profile of these individuals as “dressed in jackets and trousers . . . secretarial workers . . . situated in a position of intermediary ambivalence,” would overstate the economic means and cultural outlook of many of the footballing entrepreneurs in the Lusophone African settings.³¹ For example, Hilário characterized these individuals in Mozambique as “guys who lived in the districts, in huts, shall we say, wooden and zinc houses, and worked in factories or petrol stations, in the quay or the railway.”³² Even if these players enjoyed only basic accommodations, though, they typically did have steady, if modestly compensated, employment in much-needed lines of work. For example, the founding members of Grupo Desportivo Beirense, a Mozambican AFA club, included a fish trader, two shopworkers, three drivers, seven attendants, one lifeguard, one dockworker, a collector, and five servants—each occupation important, but all poorly compensated.³³