Book Review: Following the ball: The migration of African soccer players across the Portuguese colonial empire, 1949-1975

Paul Darby

doi:10.18820/24150479/aa50i2.8

Abstract

In Following the Ball, Todd Cleveland meticulously unpacks the history of African soccer players’ migratory journeys across the Portuguese colonial empire. While this book makes an invaluable contribution to what is a nascent body of literature on the migration of African football players, it also represents a telling addition to our understanding of the encounters between coloniser and colonised and how these played out specifically within the Portuguese colonial project.

Highlights

Darby / Book Review experienced minimal overt racism in Portuguese society and football through for example unequal salaries, ‘stacking’ or racial abuse from fans, they were subject to racialised commentary in the Portuguese media. Against this backdrop and the strict control that metropolitan clubs and the Estado Novo regime exercised over African football labour, the creative strategies that these individuals employed and the resilience and resourcefulness they showed in navigating metropolitan life and football is writ large across the pages of this chapter
Beyond the social bonds that they developed with other African migrant athletes, they drew on the intercultural skills that they had begun developing in the colonies to negotiate their new environs, to cultivate social, sporting and, at times, romantic relationships across the racial divide and to embrace metropolitan culture
The final chapter, and for me the highlight of the book, focuses on perhaps the greatest challenge and set of dilemmas that migrant players experienced during their careers in the metropole – negotiating the politically charged atmosphere that prevailed from the early 1960s onwards following the outbreak of the wars of independence in Angola, Guiné Bissau and Mozambique

Summary

Introduction

The final chapter, and for me the highlight of the book, focuses on perhaps the greatest challenge and set of dilemmas that migrant players experienced during their careers in the metropole – negotiating the politically charged atmosphere that prevailed from the early 1960s onwards following the outbreak of the wars of independence in Angola, Guiné Bissau and Mozambique. The book ends with a brief epilogue which sketches out the career and life trajectories of a number of African football migrants following the collapse of Portuguese colonialism in 1974.

Results

Conclusion