The Estadio de São Luis sits decrepit in the heart of Faro, Portugal. The home stadium of S.C. Farense, the faded football ground, is showing all 93 of its years and then some. As nearly all Portuguese clubs have at some point, S.C. Farense fell on incredibly difficult financial times just after the turn of the 21st-century. The Algarve-based club, a proud first division outfit during the 1990s, tumbled down to the sixth tier of Portuguese football as a result of relegations and financial sanctions during the mid-2000s.
After sitting out the 2005-06 season, the club began a long (and ongoing) journey back to the top tier the following season with the most popular approach in football: cheap African labour. With a negligible operating budget, the Leões de Faro set out to re-establish themselves as a legitimate professional club on the back of talent from former Portuguese colonies.
In nine seasons since momentarily ceasing operations, Farense has earned five promotions, been relegated once, and made three surprise runs in the domestic cup. While the club has no doubt achieved great things in the Portuguese lower leagues, it is its 21st-century post-colonial undertones which merits discussion.
The club has had thirteen managers, twelve Portuguese, in the nine seasons since ‘ground zero’. The outlier, Edinho, hailed from Brazil, another former Portuguese colony. While the club has been directed by all-Portuguese staffs, it has been led on the pitch by a literal boatload of players from a number of Portugal’s former African colonies.
Colonialism Lives on in Portuguese Football
The Portuguese Empire, though not as large or wealthy as some of the better-remembered global empires of the 18th-20th centuries, extended deep into the African continent with Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Sāo Tomé and Principe falling under Portuguese rule. Though all five were granted their independence by the mid-1970s, the Portuguese language and love for the beautiful game remains (along with a host of socioeconomic and infrastructure problems) in each.
While any official political ties with the colonies were severed by the mid-70s, sporting roots between the ‘home country’ and its outbound states had grown. Footballers from the former colonies, frustrated with the lack of opportunity and poor quality of life in their birth nation, sought to make the jump to Portugal, where wages were comparatively steady and larger.
While the name Eusébio may sound familiar, it is not Portugal’s greatest 20th-century footballer I want to talk about. The Mozambique-born Eusébio came to Portugal at the age of 18 and starred for its national team amidst fanfare and financial gain during the colonial era. However, I would rather focus on a little-known striker named Djāo.
Born in 1958 in the jungles of Mozambique, around the same time that his countryman Eusébio was being watched by hawk-like Portuguese scouts, Djāo was a capable striker who simply grew frustrated of post-colonial African football. In 1977, aged nineteen and aware of his minimal prospects as a footballer in the dirt-poor independent state of Mozambique, Djāo made the jump to Portuguese second division outfit Chaves. Fifteen years later, his career would wind down with Penafiel with a tidy fifty goals to his name.
Though his Wikipedia page is only one sentence long, and never an out-and-out star, Djāo set an important precedent in Portuguese football as the first player from a former colony to make a career in the Portuguese game.
The 1980s saw all levels of the Portuguese game permeated by the influx of players from former colonies, all seeking better lives and more stable professions in the former ‘motherland’. Trailblazing African players like Bissau-Guinean midfielder Bobó (arrival: 1981) and Cape Verdean defender Kiki (arrival: 1986) symbolized the growing post-colonial movement north for aspiring footballers.
By the 1990s, African players in Portugal hailed not only from former colonies, but from other nations such as Nigeria, Mali, and Morocco, marking an important shift in mentality. It was no longer the players flocking to the clubs; it was the clubs flocking to the continent of Africa in search of cheap, efficient labour.
Present-day Farense is not an outlier.
Minutes down the N-125 highway in southern Portugal lies the town of Olhão, home to sometime first division club S.C. Olhanense. The club has bounced back and forth between the first and second Portuguese leagues, and a quick scan of their current squad shows seven players hailing from former colonies.
Atletico C.P., a cash-strapped club recently relegated from the second division, currently has seven African players on its books, six from former colonies.
Beyond Portuguese football, the role of post-colonial African players in the European game is one that has created debate across a variety of mediums in a wide range of countries. Former French international Willy Sagnol, now a top-flight manager, summarized European football’s view of African players succinctly.
“A typical African is cheap, ready to fight, and powerful on the field.” — Willy Sagnol
Sept. 23rd, 2013
At a virtually empty Estadio de Sāo Luis, post-colonial struggle occurs. None of the spectators in the stadium know it, but they are watching a modern-day slave trade. Farense, with six African players in their team, do battle with powerful club S.C. Braga’s B-team, a side loaded with young domestic talent.
In the 34th minute, Nigerian Farense winger Akinfenwa Ibukun fights off Portuguese Braga defender Diogo Coelho before crossing the ball. Cape Verdean striker Rambé gets on the end of it and sends a beautiful shot into the Braga net.
Rambé left his own club in Cape Verde, CS Mindelense, in search of a more stable and comparatively lucrative career. But in Portuguese football, African players are a commodity, little more than a means to an end for penny-pinching teams. Contracts are sometimes honoured, sometimes not. Guaranteed contracts can disappear during a bad run of form, mysterious ‘performance bonuses’ being docked from pay-cheques.
At clubs like Farense, where budget cuts are a weekly occurrence and the team is more often in the red than not, affordable players from former colonies like Rambé and his Bissau-Guinean, Angolan, and Mozambican team-mates are a necessity for club success on — and off — the pitch.
