Book Review: Following the ball: The migration of African soccer players across the Portuguese colonial empire, 1949-1975

Abstract

In Following the Ball, Todd Cleveland meticulously unpacks the history of African soccer players’ migratory journeys across the Portuguese colonial empire. While this book makes an invaluable contribution to what is a nascent body of literature on the migration of African football players, it also represents a telling addition to our understanding of the encounters between coloniser and colonised and how these played out specifically within the Portuguese colonial project. In doing so, Cleveland’s book is further testament to the value of drawing on sport, football in this case, as a lens through which to better understand how Africans experienced, responded to and navigated their way through European colonialism. The scholarship throughout the book is first rate. It draws on a range of archival and media sources to piece together the historical detail on players’ mobilities and migratory experiences but the real strength of this study, from Paul Darby