voices, forthright expression of political opinions or other “topics of national safety and security” was impossible during the reign of the dictatorial Estado Novo regime. As such, the commentary provided by players in newspapers was typically highly guarded and concentrated around “safe” matters, namely, their sporting exploits. Similarly, mention of political matters in the Ídolos pamphlets is conspicuously, if predictably, absent. Second, written materials offer only very brief and often superficial glimpses into players’ broader lives. Such limitations hinder a reconstruction of their experiences away from the pitch, including virtually the entirety of their time in the colonies prior to relocating to Portugal, as well as their daily existence once in the metropole, beyond the few hours a week they spent in the public eye during matches.
As such, oral testimony constitutes essential evidentiary material for this study. I gathered these articulations from a number of different sources, including recent interviews given by the players that appear in newspapers, videos, and in published form. Even more useful was the recently released book Finta finta, which offers brief biographical sketches of the thirty-one greatest Mozambican footballers of all time (a list that includes a number of players from the colonial period). As part of this endeavor, author Paola Rolletta interviewed some of the footballers profiled in Finta finta and periodically incorporates excerpts from their testimonies in the text.33
Much more insightful than any of the aforementioned sources, though, were the interviews that I conducted in Africa and Europe with former players, their Portuguese teammates and coaches, and members of the, albeit extremely small, nonfootballing African community resident in Portugal during the colonial period. These indispensable sessions enabled me to reconstruct these African athletes’ lives in the colonies, including: their social origins, their ascension through the various leagues in their respective settings and across different eras, the assorted challenges they faced as they were enjoying this athletic success, and the eventual attention that metropolitan clubs paid them. Further, their testimonies illuminated their understandably anxious departures from the colonies, the often weeks-long voyages to Portugal, the 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
