Gloire Amanda’s story began in the same way as Alphonso Davies’; hope it ends the same way

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This is a Canadian soccer story.

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A young man and his family, displaced by a brutal and bloody civil war in Africa, settle in a refugee camp. From there they move even more abroad, to Edmonton, where the young man discovers his prodigious talent for soccer.

Teams line up to sign the youngster, but it’s the Vancouver Whitecaps who win, bringing him to their academy when he was 15 years old.

A few years later, he is abroad in Europe, scoring goals as a professional in stadiums packed with fans shouting their support and superlatives in German.

His name is… not Alphonso Davies.

But Gloire Amanda has followed the same path as the Bayern Munich superstar. Or, more accurately, he walked the path before his childhood friend.

Like Davies, two years his junior, Amanda’s early life was spent in a refugee camp: Nyarugusu refugee camp in the western province of Kigoma, Tanzania. After eight years in the camp, her Congolese parents, Mauwa Miebinge and Amanda Songolo, immigrated to Edmonton with Amanda and her five siblings.

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He spoke no English, only Swahili and Kibembe, his tribal language. But soccer was a language that he knew and spoke well.

He was king of the chicken coop at St. Nicholas Soccer Academy in Edmonton, where he scored goals at will; then 11-year-old Davies joined the school as a short, skinny seventh grader. Amanda was the Lenny Cooke of LeBron James or Carmelo Anthony of Davies; he was the man, while they had not yet blossomed.

Marco Bassio, the director of the St. Nicholas program, put them both on the Whitecaps’ radar.

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Amanda got sick on the second day of her Whitecaps test. He returned three months later and the academy’s technical director, Craig Dalrymple, saw his potential.

“Going to the Whitecaps, at the time, was something I was always thinking about. It was the direct path to the pros, ”Amanda said. “Being at that academy, competing with the best in Canada, I hung my head and worked hard. I excelled every year, better than before. The club said they saw potential in my membership in the first team, so I should move on. I ended up in the second team. My first season was good; they put a lot of faith in me, and I did well. “

In fact, the coaching staff promised Amanda that she would one day be part of the first team and, with her head down, she played for their USL team until the Whitecaps dubbed it in 2017. She faced a decision: move to California. , where the Caps had either hired Fresno FC as their affiliate, or chose a different route. He agonized over the decision, as the MLS team still represented the straightest path to the pros.

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“I had to make the decision to continue or to see other options. Because of the way it all happened, my parents were very reluctant for me to stay at the club. They wanted me to go to school first and see what happened next, ”Amanda said. “I was always determined that I wanted to be a professional and it was a difficult decision to make.

“It was bittersweet. I honestly think I could have gone to the other side and made the first team. It was hard to quit the way I did.

“Looking at it now, I wouldn’t say it was easy. There were times when you questioned the decision. But I focused on that … ‘Okay, what can I do here? What can I achieve here, to give myself the best opportunity (to be a professional)? ‘I tried to help the team as much as I could, and the team also did their best to help me and in the end we were very successful.

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“But, 100 percent, it was the right decision.”

Amanda joined the Oregon State Beavers in the NCAA, majoring in sociology and goal scoring. He set the school record with 37 points and tied for second on the Beavers’ one-season goal list with 15, en route to becoming the first player in school history to win the MAC Hermann Trophy as the best player in the NCAA.

Everyone assumed he would make a triumphant return to Vancouver to join the Whitecaps, who had an Amanda-sized hole in their midfield and also had their MLS rights.

The team spoke with their agent, but never submitted an offer. But it turned out to be his good luck, as SK Klagenfurt, a top-tier Austrian Bundesliga recently promoted side, offered him a two-year contract as a striker.

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“It was a European League, teams that played the Champions League, the Europa League, and now they want me to go there and try to help them? It was surreal, ”Amanda said. “It was a challenge that I believed 100% that I could rise to the occasion and do my part. It was exciting, that was the word for it. “

On Saturday, Amanda got to play the hero. Klagenfurt, playing with 10 men for 70 minutes, signed him as a substitute in the 86th minute. Thirty-one seconds later, he scored the tying goal and the 30,000 fans in his team’s stadium filled him with cheers.

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Contacted earlier this month, he described the feeling of walking the field for the first time as a member of Klagenfurt.

“My God, it’s amazing. It’s amazing to walk in that stadium, ”said the 22-year-old. “My first game, I thought I was dreaming. There are no words to describe what you expect to see.

“You go through the stadium, you open your eyes… and the stadium is full of people. You feel it. Goose bumps everywhere. “

He is only three hours from his old friend Davies, but the two have not been able to see each other. They exchange text messages and Amanda has followed her friend’s meteoric progress with Bayern Munich.

He hopes to play in a top-five league one day, but that is part of an intangible and uncertain future. All you can control is your own effort and professionalism.

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“I always thought of coming to Europe and dominating. And now it is happening. I could never have predicted this, ”he said. “The first month I was here, I pinched myself every day, just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

“I would love to play for Liverpool one day, that’s the team of my dreams. I have so many goals, so many things that I want to achieve. I’m just taking it step by step.

But athletics is unpredictable. I’m just going to be there and enjoy it. For me, that’s the only way you can live. There were times when I thought about the future and literally missed the present. “

If he had a message for others who have found themselves on the same path that he and Davies have traveled, it is this: “Never stop dreaming. Go find a way to achieve it.

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“With Alphonso (and I), I’m sure there are many, many other children with a similar story,” Amanda said. “For us, soccer has given us opportunities to support our families, to support ourselves. I hope that all the children who see me play are hungry and want to be the best version of themselves, whatever it is.

“It may not even be about football. It could be something else they’re passionate about. If I can help make the world a little better, that’s enough. “

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