Stars like Sadio Mané, Mohamed Salah, and Victor Osimhen are making headlines at the African Cup of Nations being held in Ivory Coast. However, they are competing alongside amateur players enjoying a unique opportunity lasting one to two weeks. The African tournament includes a large and diverse group of players, especially evident in the last decade with the increase in the number of participating teams to 24, while many countries have sought talent beyond their borders.
This means a musician playing football in his spare time was among the over 600 players competing in Ivory Coast, along with a player who was delivering orders just months ago, and another who was contacted for the first time via LinkedIn. Stanley Ratifo, a striker from Mozambique, who exited the tournament on Monday, returned to play for "Fortshaim," a fifth division club in German football.
Stanley was born in Halle, and his father was a former worker in East Germany. He abandoned his dream of becoming a professional player at "Cologne" after being close to joining the first team but the club did not sign him. Stanley also worked in the music industry and was associated with an organization based in Fortshaim, Southwest Germany, where he had around nine thousand monthly listeners on Spotify. His most famous song (Prada Shades) reached 224 thousand listeners. He explained, "But the passion for football never left me," so he went to a local club and asked to train, leading to an invitation to join. Once he started playing regularly, he contacted Mozambique, and they invited him to attend and scored a goal in his first appearance for his country. He now trains during the day and plays music at night, heading off to play with the national team every few months. He added, "I can walk down the street in Germany every day, and no one knows who I am, but in Mozambique, people always stop me."
Similarly, Miano Danilo van den Bos (20 years old) from the Netherlands abandoned his dream of becoming a professional football player with "FC Eindhoven," a team in the Dutch second division. "Is this a joke?" he was delivering orders for a takeaway restaurant in his hometown of Veldhoven before joining an academy in Spain for players seeking to stay fit while looking for another opportunity in the game. His mother is from Tanzania, and the family would go there on holiday every two years, though he does not know how Adil Amrouche, the coach of the Tanzanian national team who was dismissed during the tournament, heard about him. He said, "I received a call from the national team coach, and I thought to myself, is this a joke?" He was invited to join a training camp before the Africa Cup of Nations and did enough to impress the coach and secure a spot on the roster. He recalled the moment he was informed he made the squad, saying, "My mother burst into tears."
Roberto Lopez, a defender from Cape Verde, whose country surprised everyone by topping Group B, was born in Dublin. Although he was used to winning the Irish league title with Shamrock Rovers, he never imagined playing internationally for the small Portuguese-speaking islands where his father is from. Roberto explained, "I set up a LinkedIn account when I was in university, but I never followed up on it." He added, "I received a message from Rui Aguas, the coach of the national team at that time, but he wrote it in Portuguese, and I thought it was a spam message and did not pay it any mind. Then, about nine months later, he messaged me again saying: Hello Roberto, did you have a chance to think about what I said to you?"
He continued, "I felt rude for not replying to him months earlier. I copied the message and used Google Translate, which simply said: We are looking to bring in new players to the Cape Verde squad; are you interested in announcing your joining Cape Verde?" Lopez said he did not wait for a second invitation; that was before the last Africa Cup of Nations held in Cameroon, where he played every match and continued to play regularly during the tournament taking place in Ivory Coast, where the Cape Verde national team was one of the standout teams.
