Musa Juwara
The incredible rise of Africa’s next big thing
European club football is bursting with a sudden explosion of young African talent, but few have had the dramatic journey or shown the resilience and promise of teenager Musa Juwara. The 18-year-old from The Gambia made a sensational entrée in Serie A during lockdown at the belated end of the last season with Bologna, and much is expected from him in the new league campaign after joining Boavista on loan on transfer deadline day – even if the Portuguese club are expected to nurture his progress with patience and caution.
Plus, he will soon get a chance to go home with The Gambia national team for the resumption of the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers after leaving the small west African nation aged just 14 and undertaking a perilous journey across the Mediterranean in a dinghy among the flood of Africans seeking economic opportunity in Europe.
Juwara was among the luckier ones, plucked from the sea by a German NGO rescue ship, but docking in Messina and sent to a reception centre for unaccompanied minors in Ruoti. It was there, kicking a ball around, that local amateur team Virtus Avigliano gave him an opportunity to play and after a while, the coach Vitantonio Summa and his wife Loredana Bruno, became his legal guardian. At the end of the 2016-17 season, Virtus Avigliano won their regional championship with the young Gambian the centre point and his reputation quickly extending beyond the south of Italy.
But there was still a legal stumbling block that had to be overcome before he could move to Chievo and play in their Primavera side. Initially the Italian federation would not let him play, citing new anti-exploitation rules for young illegal immigrants, but after a legal battle he was allowed to move, along with his adopted family to the north, where his new club also offered a chance at some education.
Juwara has not looked back since, dominating the juniors, and on the last day of Chievo’s latest Serie A stay in May 2019 made an Italian top-flight debut in the latter stages of the game against Frosinone, with both clubs already relegated.
Bologna did not hesitate to sign him soon thereafter, for a reported €500,000, and he continued to bang in the goals at junior level, while being integrated into first-team training by coach Sinisa Mihajlovic. Last December he made his debut in the first team in the Coppa Italia at Udinese, and in February, just before lockdown, a brief run late in the league game at Roma.
But it was a first Serie A goal in July that thrust the teen into the worldwide spotlight, coming off the bench to equalise in Bologna’s eventual 2-1 victory at third-placed Internazionale.
“It’s a dream come true for me and I will remember this for the rest of my life,” he told TV viewers straight after. Now more regular first-team football in Portugal’s Primeira Liga and a promising international career await.
When The Gambia’s Belgian coach Tom Saintfiet went to meet him in January, he was impressed by not only his talented ability but his desire too. “His speed, qualities and skills are all heightened by a sense of motivation,” he said.
Juwara, ironically, is not the only refugee from The Gambia who has broken through in Italy in recent times. Ebrima Darboe, 19, has been elevated to Roma’s first-team squad this season and his story will have a similar resonance when he makes his expected breakthrough, while Catania defender Kalifa Manneh has been playing in Serie C and also overcame much danger and peril to travel to Europe in an effort to live his dream.
Mark Gleeson