An Immigrant Story

The inflatable mattress. 

That’s the first memory I have of coming to a new country.

For a couple weeks, we didn’t have much. Just an apartment with nothing in it. Dodgy lights. An old couch. The heat wasn’t turned on yet. Definitely no beds. So my mother went to the department store and bought one of those cheap inflatable mattresses for us. 

I remember it coming to life. You know when it blows up like a balloon? It was so cool. It’s like we had nothing, and then two minutes later, we had something. I know that’s the story of millions of kids who move to a new place, but it’s burned into my brain. 

You feel like a king when you get in that bed, no?

My mother had moved me and my 3-year-old sister from Senegal to Brussels to give us a better opportunity. I was 11. I had a Belgian passport through my father, who had been living in Belgium for years, but my mom was risking everything for us. When we landed, we stayed with my brother’s godfather for a week, and no one would rent us an apartment. His name was George, and he was a doctor in Brussels. He actually had to sign for the apartment to guarantee that we would pay. He is the first angel in this story. You will meet more. 

We were at the mercy of social services. Starting from zero. We didn’t have real furniture yet, and the inflatable bed was not big enough for the three of us. So for the first couple of weeks, my mom actually slept on a small couch so me and my little sister could have the mattress. Thank God my sister was still a little peanut. Because I was already pretty tall. We curled up on that mattress together every night, and we made it work. 

Thank God we were not fleeing war or poverty. We were very lucky in that sense. Back home in Dakar, we had a humble life, but a good life. We were living in my grandparents’ house — the whole extended family. But not like you do in England. I’m talking about 20 people in a three-story house. I think it was 20. If you asked someone from back home, they’d probably say 30. (No, 40, bro! 40!!!) 

Cousins, aunts, uncles, the whole squad. My grandfather (I call him grand-père, of course), he was like my second dad. My real father…. Well, it’s a complicated story. Let’s just say there’s still a lot of scars there. A part of me has empathy for him, because he was an African immigrant a million miles from home, just trying to make a better life. Me and my brother would visit him in the summers, and the football was great. But our relationship was difficult. 

One day you get old enough and you realise: Oh, we’re never going to be a family again, huh? You got your own thing here. You got two separate lives. 

I am still wounded from that shit, I can’t lie. 

Lucky for me, my grand-père was like 10 men combined. He was one of these alphas from the old-school. I don’t mean like the stuff you see on a podcast. I mean a real alpha. His voice was so deep, it would be shaking the walls. 

He didn’t even have to say anything. 

He could just sigh real deep, and you would straighten up. 

He loved football. When it got too loud and he got annoyed with everybody, he would retreat up to the top floor. There was a terrace room up there, and that was his sanctuary. You didn’t go up there unless you were invited. And I was always invited. For some reason, I never annoyed him. We used to sit up there and he would just read to me, imparting wisdom. Sometimes it was the Quran, sometimes it was a book or a newspaper. Once he was at peace, we’d go back downstairs and eat dinner. He had to have his rice with onion sauce and fish. If the football was on, he would get himself all pampered. Picture this big guy wearing the traditional Senegalese kaftan, spraying himself with cologne. 

“Grand-père, why you gotta be smelling nice to watch the football?” 

I guess it was his way of respecting the game, the same way he'd put on a suit for a wedding.

He had this big brown chair, and that was his throne. You didn’t dare sit in that chair. I would lay on the carpet and watch the match. I can still smell that carpet. In Senegal, we use a lot of incense, and it was this beautiful mix of incense and .... old. 

I would always be telling him, “I need to move to Belgium so I can be a footballer!” 

Me and my older brother were hammering my mom every day. 

“Please, please, please, let’s go!” 

But she had built up her own physio business over years and years. She was a successful woman. Imagine, your 11-year-old kid telling you, “You have to give up everything so we can chase a dream.” 

And do you know what she did? 

She gave up everything so we could chase a dream. Every damn thing. 

I have tears in my eyes thinking about that now. At the time, I had no idea what she was risking. I was just a child with a stupid dream. I was not special. I was just a good player in Dakar. I was just…… anybody.

But I remember one night she just broke down. She said, “You are really serious about this?”

We said, “We’re serious! We can do it!” 

She said.... Hahahaha.... She will kill me for this, but she said, “Because if I'm moving all the way to Belgium, I’m not moving for the bullshit.”

Telling my grand-père was the hardest part. He fought against it for a long time. I think he knew that he was going to be bored without us. 

Who is going to watch football with me now? Who can I talk to when I’m annoyed with everybody? 

But he saw how much we wanted it, and he gave his blessing. In Senegal, without his blessing, it’s a wrap. It’s not happening. In the end, my brother had to stay in Senegal to finish school, so it was just me, my mother and my little sister starting life in a new country.

I remember before we left, my grand-père told me, “You are the man of your house now. Protect your mother.”

I was 11. 

We got on a plane with our bags, and nothing else. 

That’s when my big sister Mélissa comes into the story. My second angel. She’s 12 years older than me — same dad, different mom. She had been living in Belgium most of her life. She started out like a stranger to me, but she became my savior. She was the one who would always take me to football. She had a good job at a hospital, and she would bring over forks, spoons, blankets, anything. And the amazing thing is that her mom helped as well. Like they say, “It takes a village.” And day by day, we were building a home. 

I remember when I started school, I had five pairs of trousers. One for every day. So I had to get really good at mixing and matching with my two pairs of shoes. 

OK, I think I did a good job today. People don’t realise it’s Monday and I’m wearing my Thursday Pants.

Every immigrant kid has a pair of Thursday Pants. But we make it work. 

It was a culture shock, I’m not going to lie. I was so excited to make new friends, because in Senegal, people are really open and if you switch schools, everybody comes up to you the first day and by the end of the day, you got 20 new friends. 

But in Belgium.... 

This is no slander, but it’s just different. 

On the first day, I walk into class late, and I’m the only Black Muslim kid in the classroom. Everybody is just looking at me like....

😐

It was a really good school, one of the best in Belgium. That’s the great thing about our country. Even if you aren’t rich, you just need good grades at your previous school to be admitted, and it’s all free. The thing is, everybody knew each other already. I get to lunch, and the first question anybody asks me — with no buildup, no hello, in English….

This kid goes, “Where you live, are there lions?” 

I’m like, “Lions? I lived in the city. You don’t know Dakar? We got Skype, bro.” 

It wasn’t even intentional ignorance. He really just did not know anything about Senegal. I started speaking French, and all the kids were like, “Oh. Cool. OK.” 

By the end of the week, we were super cool. Some of those guys are still my good friends to this day. But if I’m honest, real life was easier to integrate into than football. It’s kind of the opposite of what you hear about football all the time. The PR version.“On a football pitch, we’re all the same." 

The truth is more complicated. 

When I was 15, I started playing for my first real club, Zulte Waregem. It’s over in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, and I didn’t speak Dutch. And they never let me forget it! I’m just being real. Everybody was looking at me like, “No Dutch, huh? 🙄 OK, we don’t know you.” 

I’m thinking: OK, I speak four languages, but I don’t speak Dutch yet. Cool. I’m doing my best, bro. 

I couldn’t even get a match. The guy playing in front of me, his dad was one of the sponsors of the club. Me and the coach didn’t vibe. He’d purposely have me start warming up from minute 1. Literally 89 minutes on the sideline, doing sprints. Then maybe if I was lucky I’d get subbed on for 2 minutes. 

I would be thinking, Man…. My mother gave up her life for this??

Around that time, just when it couldn’t get any darker, I came home from training one night and ……  it turned pitch black. 

Back then, me and Mélissa had this routine. I’d come home all muddy and wet, and she’d be laying on the bed with the blanket all cosy and everything, watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians. That was like her comfort food after she stood around in the freezing rain for three hours waiting for me. 

And I’d be doing that thing where you’re standing off to the side of the TV, acting like you’re not watching, but you’re really watching. 

“Come on, really? The Kardashians?" 

You know how it goes. Just standing by the side of the TV, hands behind my back, not fully committing, you know? 

My sister would be giving me the side-eye, like “Come on, you know you wanna sit down.” 

I was a Fake Alpha until the very end. Denying everything. 

“Alright, but I’m just cold. Give me the blanket. What’s going on with Khloé?”

It was all cap. I can admit that now. To the whole Kardashian family: I apologise. I secretly loved y’all. I was fully invested. Hahaha. 

There’s something special about that moment when you come home from training, right? Especially when it’s cold and miserable. Footballers understand what I mean. You’re so sore and tired — but you’re that good kind of sore. You just want to sit there and watch something dumb with your family, and you know you earned it. Playing back all your highlights in your head. Warming up your feet. Isn’t that the best moment of the day? I love that. And that was our routine at the time. 

One night, we were chilling like usual, and out of the blue, she said, “Hey, there’s something that’s been weighing on my chest. I’ve been wanting to tell you for a few weeks actually, but I didn’t know how to do it.” 

In our family, we don’t talk like that. She hit me with the Netflix dialogue. I just went numb. I kind of knew: Yo, my life is about to change. 

She said, “Yeah ………. I have cancer.”

“What? Stop playing.”

“I have cancer. I start chemo next week.” 

And this is so embarrassing to admit, but I’m a footballer, right? So I went right into Footballer Mode. I acted like she told me we just dropped three points. I said, “Cancer? F*** it. We’re taking this on the chin. We fight.” 

That’s how I always protect myself, I guess. Remember, she’s crying telling me all this.

I said, “It is what it is. Marcus Aurelius. Bang. We move.”

(Note from my sister: Apparently, what I actually said was, “Come on, we ain’t bitches.”) 

😂

It was so ridiculous that she started laughing. 

She was like, “My brother is nuts.” 

It was laughter mixed with tears mixed with laughter. She immediately went into business mode. 

“I can’t take you to training while I’m doing chemo, but we’ll figure it out.” 

We carried on like nothing changed. I remember we had a tournament at the weekend, and it was snowing, so all the trains were cancelled. I needed somebody to drive me 90 minutes to the ground, so my sister called up her friend, and he helped us. When we got to the parking lot, there were only a few cars. I thought it was weird, because for the Dutch, if you’re on time, you’re already 10 minutes late. But before I could figure out what was going on, my sister’s friend started driving back home. 

The doors are locked. No one is around. I’m standing there waiting in the snow. I’m trying to call my teammates, and nobody is answering.

After maybe 20 minutes, the coach opens the door. 

In Dutch, he said, “Hey, Amadou, what are you doing here?”

I said, “What? We have a tournament.”

He said, “Oh, they didn’t tell you?”

He called every single parent. He didn’t call my mother. He didn’t call my sister. We were the only ones. 

But that’s cool. It’s not even what he said, or even what he did. 

Honestly, it was the big f****** smile on his face. You can’t hide that. I will remember that smile until the day I die. 

I’ve kept the mental receipt of that my entire life. Just when I wanted to give up on football, it gave me fuel.

He went back inside, and I waited in the snow for my ride to come back, and I kept thinking, “Cool. I’ll get my revenge. One day, when you have to watch me on TV with the national team, we’ll see who is smiling.” 

The hardest part wasn’t actually anything the coaches would throw at me. It was seeing my sister starting her second round of chemo, and watching her hair falling out. It crushed me. I hid it from everybody. On the outside, I was the happy kid. But seeing her out of breath and struggling to walk, I wanted to cry every day. We took a trip back to Senegal to see our family, and we actually decided to shave her head on the terrace of my grandparents’ house. I thought she was going to do it herself. But she looked at me and said, “I want you to do it.” 

It almost broke me. But when I saw her rubbing her head and smiling, like she was really feeling it, I could finally breathe again. It was such a relief. Being back home, it gave us a lot of strength to carry on. I remember just laying on the floor, smelling the carpet. Incense and old times. 

We went back to Belgium, and I played in a few matches — literally I think it was 5 or 6 games that I touched the grass. Right before my sister got sick, she bought this handheld camera, and she would stand on the sideline filming me. She had absolutely no interest in football. Her degree was in international business. But she would sit on the computer for hours googling the emails of scouts from every club in Europe. 

Overnight, she turned into a super agent. 

She would email them her little mixtapes, but like a business email. 

“Good morning. Are you familiar with Amadou Onana? We would love to touch base. Sincerely, Mélissa.” 

I was like, “Yo, you can’t just do that!” 

She said, “Why not? Click.” 

And yeah, honestly, why not? 

In the junk folder of every club in Europe, there is an email from my sister. Real Madrid. Barcelona. Real Betis. Wolverhampton. Burnley. Everyone, check your spam. You had a chance to sign me at 15. 

A few weeks after we came back from Senegal, we got the news. 

“Hoffenheim want to have a look at you.” 

When you’re under-18, your club has to sign a release paper to let you go and do the trial. My coach took weeks to sign the paper, and when he finally did, he handed it to me and said, “I don’t even know why you want to go on a trial in Germany if you can’t even get minutes in Belgium.”

OK, Cool. Receipt filed. 

Mélissa could barely walk without her crutches, but she rode with me on the train to Hoffenheim. It was freezing cold. Minus 12. We had to stop in Frankfurt to change trains, and it was confusing. I remember I got off the train, and was carrying all the luggage, and I ran ahead to try to find someone to tell us where to get the next train. 

I turned around — and I’ll never forget this image — I saw my sister. She was wearing a black coat, with a red neck warmer, and a burgundy hat. Bald head. Crutches. She was struggling to walk across the platform. She was limping and out of breath. Just so weak. But fighting ….. fighting.

And she just looked at me. 

We locked eyes, and we didn’t even say anything. 

That moment changed my life. 

I just realised: You cannot fail. 

If she can literally drag herself across that platform so that I can chase my dream, then what am I scared of? 

After that moment, I had no fear on a football pitch. 

The next morning, we showed up to Hoffenheim and they put me in the Footbonaut. It’s this cube from the future. It’s all robotic, with balls shooting out from different angles, you have to control the ball and pass it into these squares that light up. It was some Squid Games shit. I didn’t even know if I did good or bad. 

Afterwards, one of the coaches came up to Mélissa and he said, “After what I’ve seen, I don’t even need him to train. I want him.”

The coach’s name was Danny Galm. To this day, I still text him. Even when I signed in the Premier League, I wrote to him, just to say thank you. In the space of a year, I’d gone from nearly quitting at Zulte Waregem, standing outside in the snow, all alone, to getting a move to Germany. 

One day my phone started buzzing. 

Grand-père was calling. 

I said, “Grand-père! What’s up? Are you grumpy today?”

He said, “This is just the beginning. Don't get lost.”

Then he hung up.

He was right. 

Hoffenheim. Hamburg. Lille. Everton. Aston Villa. That’s just the football. If you want a good football story, watch a good football match. This is life I’m talking about. This is what we neglect. These stories, these images ― they are my ikigai. It’s a Japanese term that I like. It’s my why. My reason for being. 

My mom sleeping on this little couch while we slept on the inflatable mattress. 

My sister limping across the train platform. 

My grand-père letting me be his little buddy when he wanted to get away from everyone else. 

All of this, it’s my ikigai. The hard stuff, too. I don’t forget the pain. 

The pain of my coach smiling in my face when I was all alone in the cold. 

The pain of all the parents who yelled from the stands, “Hey what is this kid doing here? Go back to your country!” 

I have all the receipts. I never get bitter. But I never forget either. 

At the end of the day, this country gave me everything. Belgian social services put food on our table when we were desperate. The hospitals saved Mélissa’s life. The schools gave me friends for life. The football academies gave me a chance to live my dream. I owe a lot to Belgium. And my scars, too. 

Isn’t that beautiful? I came to this country at 11 years old as a Black, Muslim immigrant. Through football, I got to play at the World Cup. I remember when I started against Morocco at the World Cup, and during the anthem, I looked up into the crowd where my family was sitting. The crowd in Qatar was 90% Moroccans wearing red – their red, not our red. So I actually spotted my mom and my sisters. They were smiling and waving. 

At that moment, all you’re thinking is: Can you believe this shit??? We’re here!!!!!!

Every time I think about it, I still get chills. 

Grand-pere was back home on his throne, saying, “Focus, eh? Focus, boy.” 

One of the greatest moments of my life was the first time that Kevin De Bruyne handed me the captain’s armband the year after that World Cup. It was at the very end of a friendly, just for a few minutes. But for me, it was as big of a feeling as starting in the World Cup. It was so deep. Kev looked around the pitch, and he saw me, and for whatever reason, he chose me. 

I know football is not perfect. Belgium is not perfect. But how can you doubt the power of that? That’s the immigrant story. The one I wish they would tell. 

You know, it even made my grand-père emotional. A few months after I wore the armband, there was a documentary about my life, and a journalist did an interview with him. I don’t even know how they tracked him down. He must be getting soft in his old age. But they had him record a video message for me. Growing up, I had never heard him tell me he loved me, or that he was proud of me. Those emotions don’t really exist in our day-to-day lingo. It’s more .... understood. I felt it, but I never heard it. 

Until that day. 

His voice was softer than I always remember it. In your head, your grandparents never age. To me, he’s still the king on his throne. I have to keep reminding myself that he’s going to be 90 soon. Of course, he had on his white kaftan and his white kufi. He was probably smelling amazing.

He said, “Amadou? Well, he was a happy child. Very easygoing. A respectful boy.”

Then he started talking about my qualities as a footballer. Hahaha. Naturally! 

“Very technical. Good vision. Always ready to sacrifice for the team….” 

Grand-père classique. 

But then he said something that will stay with me forever.

 “He left home to chase his dream, and he had to earn everything to make it to where he is now. He is a good boy. And I am proud of him.” 

I don’t think I’ve ever cried so hard. I got tears on the page here remembering it now. 

That’s what I was chasing my whole life. 

Grand-père, thank you for all the wisdom. And most of all, thank you for letting me go.