LITMIR.BIZ

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important social insights they gleaned during the journeys, and the ways travel experiences solidified bonds among migrants, irrespective of race, who shared common points of departure. Finally, this testimony proved equally crucial in attempting to understand footballers’ social experiences in the metropole and to better comprehend the role(s) they wanted soccer to play in their lives, especially for those players who sought to consolidate their postathletic lives by strategically seeking educational or long-term employment opportunities. In fact, most of my informants, accustomed to fielding countless, virtually identical questions about their footballing feats in Portugal, were pleasantly surprised, arguably even bemused, when I inquired about their experiences—both quotidian and significant—away from the pitch.³⁴

       Organization

      Over a series of loosely chronological chapters, I consider the development of football in the colonies and thereafter trace these athletes’ histories as they enjoyed initial success in Africa and subsequently relocated to Portugal, negotiating a metropolitan environment that was, at once, both vaguely familiar and unsettlingly unfamiliar. Utilizing the aforementioned archival and oral evidence, I highlight change over time within each thematic chapter in order to provide a diachronic understanding of the various settings and the changing ways the footballers navigated these milieus.

      Chapter 1 offers a foundational overview of the Portuguese empire in Africa, including the shifting environments that indigenous residents daily negotiated. To illuminate these contexts, I consider the social backgrounds of the emigrant footballers, many of whom were mestiços or were otherwise intermediate members of colonial society. This chapter also explores the introduction of football into Portugal’s African empire by a variety of agents, whose interests often overlapped, and the role that newspapers and radio played in the sport’s popularization. Both practitioners and fans catalyzed this growth, eagerly consuming soccer developments from the metropole and around the world, and rapidly forming allegiances to Portuguese clubs.

      Chapter 2 examines the various ways Africans began to play the sport, including by forming “native” clubs and associations (leagues). Initially barred from participation in associations reserved for white practitioners, Africans gradually began to organize their own versions. Over time, mestiço and black players were invited to play in the formerly whites-only leagues in the colonies, and eventually this racial barrier was dissolved, the first step toward the very best players—irrespective of race—showcasing their skills in the metropole. The chapter further examines the social backgrounds of these footballers and also plumbs the process of cultural exposure and adjustment that commenced in the colonies—in mixed-race households, on racially integrated clubs while playing for Portuguese coaches, and at workplaces—which collectively played a key role in the migrant athletes’ success in the metropole, both on and off the pitch.

      Chapter 3 explores the regime’s motivations to permit these footballers to relocate to Portugal, as well as the scouting and signing processes that advanced and facilitated the outflows. The chapter explicitly links Africa and Europe, following the athletes as they undertook long journeys from the colonies to the metropole, during which they often established or deepened relations with fellow migrant athletes—white, black, and mestiço—as well as with Portuguese copassengers. Upon arrival, these players remained under the custody of their new clubs, which supported the footballers materially and helped them adjust to their new environments. Although many of the African migrants would be based in or around the capital city of Lisbon, many others headed north, some south, and a few into the eastern interior of the country.

      Chapter 4 examines the range of challenges players faced as they attempted to settle into life in Portugal. Most of their tribulations were attributable not only to separation from friends and family, but also to the rigors of professional football in Europe. The footballers also faced other impediments, including the inability to transfer to clubs beyond Portugal’s borders owing to their propagandistic value and the regime’s political insecurities, as well as to the considerable competitiveness and attendant fame they generated for Portugal’s club and national teams. In response to these constraints, players drew from a set of labor strategies to capitalize upon opportunities available within the metropole. Although the athletes relied on their prodigious soccer skills to succeed on the pitch, the labor tactics they applied away from it constituted vital methods for those footballers who farsightedly sought to exploit their situations before their athleticism faded.

      Chapter 5 explores the ways players navigated the politically charged environments in both the colonies and the metropole, especially following the outbreak of the wars for independence in the African territories in the early 1960s. Most of the players eschewed politics, at least overtly, strategically cooperating with an assortment of entities, as manifested in recurring, eventually normative, displays of social conciliation and professional focus. This approach was at times difficult to maintain, however, namely, during moments of political unrest in Portugal, in which football was used as a vehicle for both popular protest and statutory repression. Although the regime tried to exploit the players for political ends, they generally maintained their distance from the dictatorship in an attempt to dispassionately avoid co-option. Nor did most of these Lusophone athletes engage in revolutionary politics and, thus, none of the nationalist movements operating in Portugal’s colonies actively sought their support.

      Finally, an epilogue considers both the immediate plights and the enduring legacies of these African athletes in the years and decades following their playing days. Many of the retired footballers remained in Portugal, while others returned to their respective homelands or relocated elsewhere in the world, forming a global diaspora of former athletes. It would be difficult to overemphasize the effects these players had on their Portuguese club teams and, perhaps more visibly, on a national team that had been in shambles prior to their arrival. Yet their impact wasn’t limited to the period in which they were engaged in athletic careers. These “Jackie Robinsons” of global soccer were among the first African players who collectively precipitated waves of aspirant athletes to trace their footsteps from the innumerable pitches and endeavoring associations on the continent to the various leagues in Europe and beyond.³⁵ Had these Lusophone footballers not been so effective on and off the pitch, this form of athletic emigration may well not have developed so rapidly, or spawned so many imitators.

      1

       Foundations

      The Introduction and Consumption of Soccer in Lusophone Africa

      In Mozambique, I saw Belenenses [a Lisbon-based club] when they came. I also saw Académica [a Coimbra-based club] when they came to play in the Portuguese Cup. . . . In Africa, we saw Portuguese football as something from another world. We didn’t have TV; we relied on radio. But the following day at school, or at work, when we discussed the result of the match we often said: “Did you see that play? Did you see that cross?” Others would say, “He was offside.” But we had only heard the match on the radio! We had passion for metropolitan football. . . . It was always a frenetic environment when Benfica, Porto, or Sporting [Portuguese clubs] came to Mozambique or Angola. . . . Angola had . . . better conditions, but the enthusiasm was great everywhere.

      —Shéu Han, a Mozambican player who traveled to Portugal in 1970 to launch a career with Benfica and also participated on tours of the African colonies while a member of the club, 2014

      Few Mozambican youth would go on to enjoy the type of decorated soccer career that Shéu did, but virtually all of them followed metropolitan football growing up in the colony, enthusiastically and imaginatively envisioning events unfolding on the distant pitches. The seeds of this durable sporting enthusiasm had been planted decades previously by an array of individuals wielding a range of motives, many of which overlapped. This mélange of football advocates included missionaries, soldiers,

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