Former TTA player Sydney Ligunya is loving life in Europe. Sydney got offered the opportunity to join our partner academy FC Malaga City (Spain) after impressing in our Incubator Program. We caught up with him recently and he talked to us about life in Spain; his highlights, struggles, and plenty more.
A picture of Sydney Ligunya at FC Malaga City
Food has a great influence on how we adapt to new environments, so it was only right to start the interview with a question about food. That’s why they pay us the big bucks, for moments like this!
Q1. Favourite Spanish dish?
My favorite Spanish dish would most definitely be the paella.
(Looking at this, we’d see why as well! What an appetizing way to start this interview)
Paella is regarded as Spain’s national dish by many and is certainly the most famous dish.
Keeping in line with the hard-hitting questions, we had one more difficult one.
Q2. Paella or Chapati?
Definitely Chapati (No hesitation whatsoever)
Q3. What’s the best thing about Spain?
The weather here in Spain is for me the best thing and how they embrace their culture.
Q4. Malaga beaches or Kenyan beaches?
I still think Kenyan beaches are the best in the world but Malaga beaches are beautiful.
The beaches might not be the best, but the mountains are surely a sight to behold. We’ll let you be the judge.
Q5. Biggest culture shock?
Food has been my biggest culture shock . (Again, back to where it all started)
Q6. What’s a day for you like?
I wake up at about 6.45 in the morning, say a prayer, then do my general personal hygiene. After that, I have my protein shake – which consists of banana, blueberry, milk, and honey. I then go to the gym to do some cardio work just to start up my day. Training most of the time starts at 9 am so I go train for about 2 hours.
Depending on the day, my program usually ends at 2 pm. I then usually still have futsal with some of my teammates to just improve my technical side of the game because there’s always something to improve. Then I have to prepare myself for Spanish classes which usually happen from 4 pm to 6 pm. I still have university assignments that I have to do so I embark on that right before dinner which is at 8 pm.
Q7. What are matchdays like?
These are the most intense days! Everyone’s locked in and focused. I have a certain routine that I do before my games especially when it comes to food. I have to make myself pancakes which I’ve done for the past 2 years, then I pray and just listen to music. (The highlight was intentional)
Q8. Best moment so far for you in Spain?
My best moment for me was playing in La cartuja stadium in Sevilla which is one of Spain’s national stadiums
Q9. Major differences between football in Spain vs Kenya
Football in Spain is very technical and focuses on short passing, patience, and a very high emphasis on keeping possession while Kenyan football is more direct.
Q10. What surprised you the most about the football in Spain?
The thing that shocked me the most is how the Spanish style of football which is called tiki-taka is being taught to kids as young as 5 years old thus it’s engraved in the from a very young age.
Q11. Do you get homesick? And how do you deal with that?
I get homesick here and there but for me, it’s not difficult with it cause I’m doing what I love and when I’m on that field playing nothing else out there matters to me
Q12. Hardest part about being in Spain?
Communicating with people, in the beginning, was difficult because not so many people were English speakers. I am currently learning Spanish though and getting better at it. It was difficult going around the city at first because of the language barrier but I can move around now.
Q13. Your first experience with Winter and Summer, how was it?
Winter was one of the worst experiences I had. I was sick most of it and at that point, I was ready to go back home but I managed to pull through. In the summer it gets really hot it’s next to impossible to train and do things without water breaks.
Congratulations are very much in order as Nova Pioneer and TTA graduate from the class of 2021, Peter Kolenyo, this week, committed to join Cardinal Stritch University on a 67% soccer scholarship.
Peter made the decision after receiving offers and interest from various universities including Amherst University, Manor College, Irvine Valley, Whatcom University, Pima College and others.
Cardinal Stritch is one of the most consistent NAIA Men’s soccer programs in the United States, having qualified for the NAIA National Tournament in 4 out of the past 6 years.
Peter is a graduate of the True Talents of Africa Football Academy residential program at Nova Pioneer Boys where he excelled not only on the field but also off the field, scoring high marks in his KCSE Exams in 2021.
We are extremely proud of him and we wish him well in his journey! He is set to travel to the US in August and is currently training with the TTA Football Academy’s Under 21 team.
Peter joins the list of Nova TTA Graduates headed to the US this August on Soccer scholarships which includes Cedric Mucui, Kennedy Obanda and Derrick Onyango.
Congratulations are in order as TTA Striker, Daryl Joseph has officially committed to joining Northern Oklahoma College on a 55% soccer scholarship through TTA’s Special SRUSA program. Daryl made the decision after receiving offers and interest from Fulton Montgomery, Eastern Oklahoma State College, and Phelps School.
Daryl, has been an exemplary performer for True Talents of Africa’s Under 21 team for the past 9 months and was therefore inducted into TTA’s SRUSA Program that offers players soccer scholarship opportunities to study and play in the United States.
He is now set to join one of the top Junior College programs in the US in Northern Oklahoma.
We wish him well in his journey! And we are extremely proud of him! His consistency and commitment have been a testimony to us all!
Daryl, a graduate of Brookhurst International School in Kiserian, is due to travel in August 2022, and he joins a list of 4 other TTA Students making the same trip including, Cedric Mucui, Kennedy Obanda, Peter Kolenyo and Derrick Onyango.
Congratulations are very much in order as Nova Pioneer graduate and TTA Member from the class of 2022, Derrick Onyango, this week, committed to join Cardinal Stritch University on a 69% soccer scholarship through TTA’s Special SRUSA Program.
Derrick made the decision after receiving offers and interest from Hastings University, Milligan University, St. Scholastica, Indiana Wesleyan, University of Rio Grande, etc. with soccer scholarship offers worth over 60,000 US Dollars per year. Cardinal Stritch is one of the most consistent NAIA Men’s soccer programs in the United States, having qualified for the NAIA National Tournament in 4 out of the past 6 years.
Derrick is a 2022 graduate of the True Talents of Africa Football Academy at Nova Pioneer Boys where he excelled not only on the field but also off the field, scoring high marks in his KCSE Exams and was inducted into TTA’s SRUSA program.
We are extremely proud of him and we wish him well in his journey! He is set to travel to the US in August and is currently training with the TTA Football Academy’s Under 21 team.
Derrick joins a list of 3 other Nova TTA Graduates headed to the US this August on Soccer scholarships which includes Cedric Mucui, Kennedy Obanda and Peter Kolenyo.
As a player you can have days where you’re completely unstoppable, and then other days where you can’t even control the ball…
One thing that players often forget is how much of the game is actually “MENTAL”. Of course talent is important and players do need a certain level of ability to play at a high-level. But what happens in places where all the players are talented? When everyone has ability, what makes certain players “special”?
The only real differentiating factor when you play at a high level is your “mind”. How you approach the game, the habits you have on and off the field, your level of self-belief and confidence… all of these things separate the good players from the special ones. But despite this, very few players take the mental part of their game seriously.
Consider this.
The best players are actually not that good… but mentally, they are great. They have the most important attribute of all: Confidence.
The hardest thing to give any player is confidence. Not the false kind of confidence where a player is delusional and tells themselves that they are much better than they are when their performances don’t reflect that.
We’re talking about real confidence. The confidence that not only makes a player believe he’s good enough, but actually makes them “know” that they are.
Different players cultivate and create this confidence in different ways. There are some players that seem to have it abundantly. Players like Zlatan Ibrahimović.
Zlatan Ibrahimović – AC Milan player
But then there’s the rest of us. The players whose confidence comes and goes. For us, we need to build our confidence. And the question is, how do you do that?
Where confidence comes from?
Real confidence can only come from continuous practice. If you’ve passed the ball a thousand times, the 1001th time you pass it, you won’t doubt yourself as much as you did the first time. That is confidence, and the more you practice the more confident you get.
But aside from practice, players can also train their mind. Visualization, saying affirmations, having a pre-match routine… these are only a few examples of techniques you can use. Every player is different, but if you’re a player who’s struggling with consistency and confidence, the solution isn’t always that you need to train more, it could be that you just need to train smarter and cultivate your mind.
This blog is written and created by True Talents of Africa. The TTA Football Academy program is a specialized highly intensive football program designed to turn students from ‘students’, to ‘student-athletes’. The program enables talented football players to pursue football at an elite level without subtracting from their education whilst granting them greater opportunities to play internationally.
If you would like more info on playing opportunities for yourself or your son, you can join our next masterclass.
The True Talents of Africa Football Academy is set to launch Kenya’s first fully residential International football academy in partnership with Nova Pioneer Boys Secondary School based in Tatu City, Nairobi.
The program is designed to develop young ‘student-athletes’ from all over the continent from the ages of 13 – 19 in a professional football academy environment whilst schooling at Nova Pioneer Secondary school. Essentially students will live and train on one campus with the goal of pursuing a career in football.
Since 2018, TTA’s partners have sent over 7 students on soccer scholarships to places around the world and these are the opportunities that the TTA Academy prepares Nova Students for.
“Having played professional football myself, I would say this is an opportunity which I would have loved to have growing up…”
Kevin Karuga, Nova Head Coach
“This is a big opportunity for aspiring footballers, not just in East Africa, but all over the continent. In my career, football opened doors for me that academics could not. We are simply giving the same opportunity to the students of today. At Nova, we have created the right environment to develop and mentor our student-athletes as they pursue football at the highest level.”
Kimathi Kaumbutho, TTA Director and former player and USA NAIA National Champion.
The intensive format of the program will see students train 4 times per week on campus in tandem with their studies. The program also includes weights and resistance training and ‘Mental Conditioning’, character-building sessions.
“Mental conditioning is where we mentor our student-athletes off the pitch in a classroom setting. We discuss matters regarding their mental health and character. It’s important to realize that football is simply a tool we use to educate the students and equip them to succeed in life—that’s the real goal of the academy.”
The True Talents of Africa Football program starts this coming July Term 2021 @Nova Pioneer.
Several years ago, I remember staying with my aunt and uncle in Kansas City, Missouri USA. At the time, I was working as a youth coach whilst playing at the U23 level in the USL 2 (formerly known as the PDL). The season had just ended. Earlier that year I had also competed in my final college season with the University of Rio Grande where we were crowned NAIA National Champions.
That summer was a crucial time for me because I was preparing for some prospective trials at different teams. It was a time of a lot of uncertainty and anxiety because of all the questions I had over the next step in my career. For 3 or 4 months, I was not signed by any team. It was tough.
During that time, I learnt something about professional football.
It’s Nothing like you think it is…
Every young boy has a dream of playing in the biggest leagues internationally. But as we say in Nairobi “kwa ground, vitu ni different” (On the ground, things are different).
I’m not sure where I heard this but I was once told that in the world of Professional football, there are three kinds of footballers:
The top 1% – These are the Messis, the Ronaldos, the Neymars… that live a life most of us can’t even imagine. They are at the pinnacle of the sport.
Then there is the 30% – These are the professional players that play in high level leagues across the world and live a comfortable lifestyle.
And then there is the other 70%… who nobody ever talks about – these are the professionals/semi-professionals who live contract to contract, constantly uncertain of their future and for the most part struggling to support themselves with their football.
I have been part of the 70% and I will tell you from experience… it’s not for everyone. When I was living in Kansas City, I worked out 6 times a week. sometimes twice a day. I was in the gym in the mornings, I would go coach, and then train at night with different teams. The reason I wanted to share this experience with people is because they think that the journey they’re on is hard… but they have no idea just how hard it is.
What you should do now
At True Talents of Africa, we put most of our athletes on a holiday workout program for the next few weeks as the COVID-19 Pandemic subsides (we pray). The workouts are 4 times a week and are designed to focus on football actions to improve their explosiveness and technical ability. It hurts me to say that most of our students aren’t even committed enough to complete their workouts.
The reason it hurts me is because I remember being like them—having a dream I knew nothing about. They want to play in the biggest leagues in the world but they don’t want to commit themselves to getting better every day. It saddens me.
So, I write this for any aspiring footballer, and athlete. I want you to know that it’s what you do in the dark when nobody is around that will determine what you do under the lights when everybody is watching.
90% of anything worth doing is boring and monotonous and tiresome, but that’s exactly why it’s so hard to do, because few people are willing to make that sacrifice. You don’t suddenly become professional at anything; you are a professional every day until you become one.
When I was only 7 years old, my biggest dream—the be all and end all of my entire life—was to play professional football for Arsenal Football Club in London, England.
At the time, I was just a naïve little boy with big dreams. In my family’s living room in Nairobi, Kenya we would watch the likes of Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires and Patrick Viera – they were our superheroes.
No lie, Thierry Henry was my ‘black Jesus’—my idol ( I would even walk like him when I played).
As I grew older, my fervent love for football only intensified. I joined different academies here in Kenya played for my school teams… and I was talented too. I won various awards and to this day my room in my parents’ home is filled with medals and trophies.
A Young Kimathi Kaumbutho
But… Unfortunately, then—and even now—nobody tells young footballers in Africa and Kenya about the realities of trying to play football internationally. Every Academy promises the same thing; that after playing for them you will travel far away, play in a trial in a foreign country in Europe and all your dreams will come true.
That fairytale journey happens for very few in this world. and if you don’t believe that only 1% of footballers make it pro, name me any Kenyan, or East African that has ever played for Arsenal, Chelsea, Man United… It just doesn’t happen. The problem is when parents and players are not told why.
To this day, many football academies in Nairobi, Kenya, Africa, sell a dream that is merely a fantasy to get kids and parents to enroll in their programs. Sometimes, the academies themselves don’t know the truth. Other times, the prospect of earning money from parents/players is more important. I just want to tell people the truth… it hurts much more when you realize the truth too late.
Kimathi Kaumbutho (Pictured Left)
Since my humble days as a footballer in Nairobi, I have been lucky (I prefer to say blessed) enough to have seen the world because of football. I’ve played in 4 different countries, and I played in the United States for 8 years where I played at all levels of the game. We won a National Championship in 2015 at the college level, I played semi professionally for 4 years, had professional opportunities… In 2016 I was voted in the best 11 in the southern region of the United States at U23 level. I don’t say this to brag… instead, I’m saying this because people can talk about the challenges of playing professional football, but it’s different when you’ve actually lived through them.
In 2016, I was supposed to attend pre-season with a Finnish first division club (in the Veikkausliiga). Weeks before my travel they said they couldn’t take another international player. I have had trials with clubs in various leagues including the MLS, where it felt the only barrier was my passport and country of origin. There are so many barriers to entry in the global professional game and it makes you realize that the world of professional football is not sunshine and roses. It’s grey and confusing. But nobody tells you that growing up—especially as an African. So, let me be the first.
Why is playing internationally so hard?
I’ll start by informing you that when it comes to playing professional football internationally, there are many obstacles for “foreign players”.
Every elite football league, even the Kenyan premier league has limits on how many ‘foreign’ players a team can have at any one time. Because of this, if you’re a ‘foreign’ player in the country where you’re trying to play professionally, it is so much harder.
But, why do the limits of foreign players exist?
Because playing professionally is a job and every country has immigration policies that guard against foreign workers coming to take ‘their peoples’ jobs. It’s that simple.
Let’s talk about the English Premier League, because everybody wants to play there. To play football professionally in the UK, you need a work permit. To get a work permit as a Non-EU player (a player outside of the European Union, i.e. an African), the FA, English football’s governing body, states that you must have a certain number of games played for your national team in the past 1 or 2 years. For a country that is outside the top 50 of the FIFA rankings like Kenya, you need to have played 75% of national team games in the past 2 years, or—if you’re under 21—75% in the past 1 year. This is rarely the case for many young Kenyan players who aspire to play in the UK… hence why it’s so hard.
But let’s say that you do have the national team caps and are eligible for a work permit, why would an English club forgo every player in the UK—then every player in the entire EU—then every other talented player in the world and pick you from a little known footballing country like Kenya… you’d have to be pretty special.
I’m not saying this to discourage anyone… but you need to know.
Now these rules that determine the movement of players internationally differ by country and are complex. For example, in the MLS, each team is only allowed 8 international players, in the Spanish La Liga, only three non-EU players can be included in any match-day squad.
You should also consider that FIFA bans the international transfers of players under the age of 18 unless their parents have emigrated for reasons not connected to football.
These things make playing internationally for Africans, and particularly Kenyans very hard.
So what do we do now?
People forget just how big the football world is. I’ll give you my personal advice. You are not going to go from playing in any club in Kenya to playing in Europe. If you are a young player in an academy here, you need to get yourself an ‘in between’ opportunity. A place where you will get the exposure and the elite training. Joining an international academy which offers education as well as football is best.
Going on trials with professional academies if you’re under the age of 18 is pointless. Of course, some clubs do sign players under 18 and give them ‘host’ families, but that is also illegal and for a club to go to such lengths, you’d have to be better than anything they have seen. Which is unlikely.
You can also play in the US. Many international players play in America, because it is one of the few countries that fuses elite football (soccer) and education. To give you context, my roommate when I played in the USA had played for the Man United youth team until U14… he came to America for more opportunities. “if you don’t make it in Europe by 16, you’re done…” That’s what they’ll tell you. So many talented players pursue other opportunities.
At True Talents of Africa, we partner with FA Euro (US), SRUSA (in the UK) and FC Malaga City (Spain), to give talented players real opportunities. Not sell them hopeless dreams. If you want to know more Click HERE. If you want to attend one of our Elite camps and trial for any of these opportunities, APPLY HERE.
This blog post is brought to you by True Talents of Africa – Africa’s greatest Sports Opportunity provider. Written by Kimathi Kaumbutho, TTA Football Academy Director and Author of ‘To Chase a Dream in Nairobi’ (to purchase, click here)
References
Brief, I. (n.d.). Footballer work permits. Retrieved from In Brief: https://www.inbrief.co.uk/football-law/footballer-work-permits/
Homewood, B. (2016). Reuters. Retrieved from Fifa faces lawsuit over rules banning transfer of minors: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-soccer-fifa-transfers/fifa-faces-lawsuit-over-rules-banning-transfer-of-minors-idUSKBN13J14P
