21st-century football luminaries relocated
to Europe almost exclusively in their teens,
often for France (Didier Drogba, Sadio Mané,
Michael Essien, Emmanuel Adebayor and
El Hadji Diouf) but alternatively Switzerland
(Mohamed Salah), Belgium (Yaya Toure),
the Netherlands (Nwankwo Kanu), Germany
(Jay-Jay Okocha) or Spain (Samuel Eto’o).
In contrast, Weah was nearly 22 when he
debuted for Monaco in 1988.
His upbringing in Monrovia had been both
ordinary and extraordinary. Raised by his
grandparents in one of the Liberian capital’s
slums, Weah gambled, smoked marijuana,
worked as a switchboard operator and played
football to distract from gambling, smoking
marijuana and working as a switchboard
operator. But the Pele fan also visited Brazil
as part of his sporting development thanks
to Samuel Doe, president of Liberia, supporter
of the national team and a personal friend.
Useful, no doubt.
Weah won titles with such magnificently
monikered clubs as Young Survivors, Mighty
Barrolle and Invincible Eleven before moving
to Cameroon’s Tonnerre Yaounde, which is
where, when and why Cameroon manager
Claude Le Roy recommended him to Arsene
Wenger at the Stade Louis II. “George Weah
was a real surprise,” admitted Wenger. “For
me, it was like a child discovering a chocolate
bunny in his garden over Easter. I’ve never
seen anyone explode onto the scene quite
like George did.”
A long fuse burned first, as Wenger got
Weah up to speed with fitness training andextra work on the striker’s movement – but
then came that explosion. The Frenchman
had treated his £12,000 signing like a son,
in Weah’s words, housing him and saying he
could be the world’s best player (“I thought
he was talking stupid”). The protégé repaid
his mentor and father figure by scoring 14
league goals, one every 120 minutes, plus
a couple in the European Cup. Monaco’s final
fixture featured some soon-to-be Classic
Weah, with a solo run from halfway and
powerful flicked header from just inside the
penalty area making for a hilariously good
brace against Nantes.
Later in 1989, Liberia entered a long and
bloody civil war. Weah was living in New York,
where he’d met his future wife, and flew to
and from Monaco each week by Concorde –
but physical distance could hardly provide
emotional distance. “I didn’t know whether
my parents were dead or alive,” Weah told
FFT in 1996. “People didn’t understand my
torment. Europeans find it hard to appreciate
what Africans go through when we think
about home. As far as they’re concerned, we
are paid to do a job and we just have to do it.”
Boy, did he do it. With Weah, Monaco went
deep into the European Cup, reached a Cup
Winners’ Cup final and sealed the Coupe de
France. In 1992, PSG pounced, as they would
for Kylian Mbappe 25 years later, though he
would cost a little more than £6.5 million.
In his first season in the capital, Weah won
the Coupe de France and would have lifted
a league title, too, but for his own employers.
When match-fixing Marseille were stripped
of their 1992-93 domestic crown, runners-up
PSG were offered the honour instead, only
for club owners CANAL+ to refuse it because
they feared that outraged Provence viewers
would cancel their subscriptions.
CANAL+ also turned down l’OM’s berth in
the Champions League, but that did at least
allow Les Parisiens to upset Real Madrid at
the Bernabeu in the Cup Winners’ Cup, Weah
scoring the only goal. The pain of losing their
semi-final to Arsenal was soothed by success
back home, as PSG became champions ofClockwise from
above right On
target with PSG;
League Cup joy
in ’95; en route
to a Champions
League golden
boot; “Who loves
Wenger most?”“I DIDN’T KNOW WHETHER
MY PARENTS WERE DEAD
OR ALIVE – EUROPEANS
DON’T APPRECIATE WHAT
AFRICANS GO THROUGH”
GEORGE
WEAH48 June 2022 FourFourTwo
box-to-box dribble for Milan against Verona,
underwhelms some critics because he’s half-
tackled on halfway before regaining control.
However, we owe more respect to the man
known as King George (or Mr President, these
days) in his native Liberia, and Paris Saint-
George in, er, Paris. Weah’s goals were varied,
vital and brilliantly timed. He thrived against
the fiercest opponents. His personal honours
board features not just the Ballon d’Or and
FIFA World Player of the Year – where only
Brazil icon Ronaldo denied him back-to-back
wins – but African Footballer of the Century,
as befitting its only 20th-century Ballon d’Or
recipient. If three African Footballer of the
Year awards – one at Monaco, one at PSG
and one at Milan – sounds slightly insufficient,
it’s because he was competing with fellow
legend Abedi Pele in his Champions League-
winning pomp and voted into second place
on four occasions.
Weah wasn’t about goals. That’s why the
Ballon d’Or went to him and not Alan Shearer
or Jurgen Klinsmann. Weah’s all-round game
made him a modern great. He pioneered the
lone striker role without playing as one. When
he wasn’t pressing or scoring headers, he was
creating space by dragging defenders away
from the penalty box, whereupon he’d set up
a team-mate or simply knock the ball past his
marker and chase it. What’s a defender to
do against an intelligent, technically excellent
striker who’s also quick, strong and tireless?
Zoom out from Weah’s goal against Verona
and you’ll see it all: his work outside the box,
his first touch like the weaving of golden silk,
his desire to collect a wayward opposition
corner in the game’s closing moments and
score 14 seconds later.
“I looked in front of me, spotted five players
and thought I could go through them all,” he
told FFT in 1998. Weah was a child again; the
pitch was his career laid out before him.
THE SURPRISE SUPERSTAR
By today’s standards, Weah was relatively
old when he departed Africa. The continent’s