Funding for the project was primarily provided by different entities at Augustana College and, in particular, by a series of grants awarded by the Freistat Center. The Center for Lusophone Research (CLR) / Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) also provided funding at a crucial stage of the research process, as did the University of Arkansas as I was completing the manuscript.
Gill Berchowitz at Ohio University Press deserves special mention for the central role she played in bringing this book to publication. She believed in the project from the moment she perused a draft book proposal I had crafted that was undeniably short on refinement, even if it was, it seems, long on potential. Next, the anonymous readers of the manuscript identified important issues that, without their close readings, would most likely remain unrectified. And, as always, the staff at Ohio University Press were wonderful, helping me through the various production tasks and politely declining to comment even as I repeatedly fumbled many of them.
As I mentioned in the opening passage of this section, the project has unexpectedly taken me to a variety of places, generating innumerable introductions to individuals from across the globe, many of whom have made key contributions to this text. Often, this crucial input came in the form of comments offered at academic conferences. In the United States, soccer is still not a popular—or, in some cases, even a viable—topic of study. And African soccer even less so. But beyond our borders, there is a vibrant community of scholars, from across the disciplines, engaged in remarkably insightful and useful research related to the sport. Via this project, I’ve been fortunate to have met many members of this ever-expanding group. Their contributions may ultimately be individually immeasurable, but, collectively, their feedback and suggestions have undoubtedly greatly enhanced the book.
I am also extremely grateful to my informants, who took the time to sit down with me and discuss at length their experiences. Their testimony breathes life into the narrative, and their generosity and candidness form the backbone of this book. Sadly, at least three of the former players I interviewed have since passed away. I will be eternally grateful that they spent some of the precious time that remained to sit patiently with me and recount aspects of their lives that often took them far afield from the stadiums, fans, and sporting limelight.
Finally, I am grateful for the unwavering support that my family has provided throughout this process. When I began this project, our oldest son, Lucas, was only two years old; and his younger brother, Byers, was still two years away from joining us. Between then and now, they have grown into wonderful children as well as enthusiastic soccer players and fans. Throughout the summer of 2016, we faithfully gathered around the television in our apartment in Lisbon to tune in to each of Portugal’s Euro 2016 matches. An uninspiring start to the tournament did nothing to suggest that we’d all be screaming with joy—along with the rest of the country—when Eder’s shot eluded Hugo Lloris in the 109th minute of the championship game, and then again when the final whistle blew. In this manner, and in myriad other ways, soccer has deepened our familial unity and commitment to one another. As always, my wonderful wife, Julianna, is at the center of the family, relentlessly propelling it forward each day, even as her “three boys” constantly generate impediments to this advance. If my name on the cover of the book is equivalent to a striker enjoying all the glory immediately after scoring a goal, it was Julianna who delivered the probing pass that unlocked the defense and facilitated a simple tap into the back of the net. Quietly content, following the goal she unassumingly returns to her position on the pitch, waiting for the celebration to conclude and for play to resume; she deserves all the credit, but seeks none of it.
Portugal and its former colonies in Africa.
Introduction
I remember speaking to a Portuguese colleague of mine at work in Mozambique about my impending departure to play for Sporting Clube de Portugal [a major Lisbon-based squad] and he told me, “When you arrive there, you will be a man. A football player in Portugal is a very important person.”
—Hilário da Conceição, 2013
In 1965 I was the first player from Africa and from Portugal to be awarded the World Player of the Year. For me it was an enormous responsibility. . . . I realized the enormity of winning [the award] because at that time I was twenty-three years old—old enough to understand what an honor, and a responsibility, it was. I represented Africa and Portugal, and there had never been a footballer from either to receive such an honor.
—Eusébio da Silva Ferreira, 2004
When superstar soccer1 player Eusébio left the field following Portugal’s 2–1 defeat at the hands of England in the 1966 World Cup semifinals, he was awash in tears, fiercely clutching his red and green jersey—the national colors of Portugal (see fig. I.1). Yet Eusébio da Silva Ferreira was neither born nor raised in the Iberian nation; instead, a Mozambican, he was one of the many Africans who made their way from Portugal’s colonial territories to the metropole to ply their athletic skills from the late 1940s to the end of the colonial era in 1975. Like Eusébio, many of these African soccer players performed spectacularly on the field, significantly elevating the stature of their respective club teams and vaulting the Portuguese national team to unprecedented levels, and remain among the greatest footballers of all time.
Figure I.1. Eusébio leaving the pitch following the 1966 World Cup loss to England.
While both Eusébio and Portuguese everywhere grieved following the squad’s exit from the 1966 World Cup via the match that came to be known as the Jogo das Lágrimas (Game of Tears), the country was simultaneously engaged in far graver matters. Having disregarded the “winds of change” that had heralded European nations’ abandonment of imperial territories in Africa beginning in the late 1950s, since the early 1960s Portugal had been actively attempting to suppress armed insurgencies in three of its five African colonies: Angola, Mozambique, and Guiné (the other two, Cape Verde and São Tomé, remained relatively quiet). Unlike other European colonizing nations, Portugal’s dictatorial Estado Novo (New State) regime intransigently resisted mounting international pressure to decolonize, locking itself in a struggle to retain its African possessions. The government’s insistence on the territorial—and, thus, racial—integration of Portugal and its African colonies was central to its public relations campaign intended to legitimize, and thereby maintain, the empire. As such, the reforms that facilitated the relocation of African players to the metropole were, at least in part, politically motivated, aimed to appease external critics of Lisbon rather than to genuinely loosen social restrictions and liberalize colonial society. The inclusion of African players, such as Eusébio, on Portugal’s club and national soccer teams and their sustained continental and international success constituted valuable propaganda for the increasingly embattled Estado Novo regime, which was utilized to highlight the supposed unity of the metropole and the colonies, as well as the opportunities for social mobility that its African subjects allegedly enjoyed.
This book examines the experiences of these African athletes as they relocated to Portugal from 1949 until the conclusion of the colonial era in 1975, negotiated this politically charged environment, and consolidated their postsoccer futures.2 Although always minorities on their Portuguese clubs, these players’ sporting, social, and political impacts in the colonies, metropole, and, ultimately, globally, far outweigh their numerical modesty. Beyond their outsized sporting influence, they also instilled both racial and national pride among their African compatriots and concurrently generated esteem for an increasingly beleaguered Portugal. In reconstructing the players’ transnational histories, the narrative traces their lives from the humble, informal soccer spaces in colonial Africa to the manicured pitches of Europe, while simultaneously focusing on their off-the-field challenges and successes. By examining this multicontinental