Amadou Onana’s sister was hustling football trials for him even as she fought her cancer battle

He’s wondering whether it was a mistake – his dream of playing professional football, his family leaving Senegal for Belgium for the sake of his career. Only one person is truly fighting his corner: Melissa, his older sister. She has been filming him playing and badgering clubs around Europe with the videos, and hustles him a trial at Hoffenheim in this way.

To get to Hoffenheim, it’s a five-hour train journey from Brussels, with several changes, and Amadou and Melissa are going together. He doesn’t have an agent, so she’s going to fulfil the role, but she’s desperately sick. “She had a cancer,” Amadou says, “and was very ill. She had just gone through chemo and had the [infusion] bag [attached to her]. Her head shaved. We had some issues with the train and she had to run …” He tails off, and maybe you can picture the poignant scene.

“All those things that we’ve been through …” he adds. “That’s my fuel, man.”

Onana smashed his trial, compelling Hoffenheim’s youth manager at the time, Danny Galm, to sign him after the first day. From there he has grafted and excelled, graduating to first-team football with Hamburg in Bundesliga II in 2020. Then came Lille the following year, where his rangy dynamism in midfield caught the attention of several Premier League clubs, and where he tasted the Champions League and became a senior Belgium international.

And now Everton, a club he chose ahead of West Ham United and other suitors, moving in a £33 million deal, and in whose training ground we are sitting, discussing his journey and how the club’s grounded-yet- ambitious ethos and battling traditions suit him perfectly.

“It is the kind of player I am,” he says. “I’m never going to let people down. I’m going to give my all and fight until the end, because this is what I’ve been doing my whole life. I’m going to fight, because nothing has been given to me, because hard work is the only thing that pays off. I mean, there is no secret. Just work.”

He’s 21, speaks five languages and is working towards a sixth, while studying for a Belgian further education diploma and writing music in his spare time – you should hear him sing. His football is even more impressive, evident in how rapidly he is settling into the Premier League and the impact he is increasingly having. Frank Lampard views him as a personal project and it’s not hard to understand their rapport: the Everton manager, when a player himself, had early doubters and made fools of them through intelligence and sweat.

Onana was raised in a household of 14 family members, including his siblings, cousins, mother, aunt and grandparents, in the Colobane district of Dakar. “It’s kind of a tough area but football is the thing that brings people together,” he says. “My first games were in the street, lots of kids competing. It felt like the Champions League!”

By 12, his talent was outgrowing his surrounds and he pressed his mother to move to Belgium, where his father lived. He, his mum, a brother and a sister uprooted.

“Props to my mum. Raising three kids alone in a different country,” he says. “She did every job she could. I could write a book about my mum, a Harry Potter saga in five books. She is a very strong woman – I am surrounded by strong women in my family. She’s a big fan of football, who after my games calls to say, ‘You did this well, you didn’t do that, next time improve.’

“Yet the funny thing was, when we came to Belgium, she was, ‘I don’t care about football, just focus on school. As long as you bring me good grades you can keep playing and if you don’t, football’s finished.’ It was clear.

“I’ve always felt that if my mum left all she had in Senegal to give us a better life, we have to pay her back somehow. She doesn’t ask for that, but I feel responsible.”

Also influential is his grandfather. “A very hard guy – but that’s how he shows his love for you,” Onana says. “He wants the best for you. He played the role of my dad because I didn’t really have one, so we have a very strong bond. He’s the one who gave me every value I have.” Those values? “Being respectful, not giving up, giving your all – no matter how life goes.”

His youth career proved full of knockbacks. At Anderlecht’s academy he was never rated and left for Zulte, a small provincial club, yet found doors – and minds – closed there. “It was a big battle with my mum to let me join Zulte and I had to take responsibility for the decision. It meant one hour on the train, doing my homework on the journey, then walking three miles to the training centre, four times a week, coming home at 11, sometimes 12.

“I arrived every day and gave it my all but from the first day the [youth-team] manager would say, ‘Hey, go and warm up’ – and I’d warm up for 90 minutes and not get on. I was 14, 15 and it felt very hard.”

With his good feet, surging stride and ability to spot gaps, Onana has the qualities of an attacking, creative player, but a physique that a coach who thinks in certain cliches might associate with just a brawny, defensive one. “I wasn’t in [the Zulte coaches’] heads, so I can’t really tell you.”

During that period, “there were times when I wanted to give up. Even if I loved football and knew I was good, people telling you you’re trash messes with your head. Especially as a teenager, because it’s a time in life when you’re questioning yourself. But some young players get hyped up and don’t make it and I had the luck that people were talking shit about me, excuse the language. People were throwing shit and telling me I wasn’t going to make it. And I was, ‘I’m going to make it anyway.’ ”

Melissa, 13 years his senior, got busy, “following me everywhere with a camera, taking videos of any game I played”. When she organised the trial at Hoffenheim, she and Amadou were summoned to Zulte. “We drove one hour to get there and the meeting lasted five minutes,” he says. “One of the managers was like, ‘You’re not ready, you’re not going to make it.’ So at the trial, that sentence was in my head the whole time. I was [thinking]: ‘I’m going to make it – just for that guy.’

“But I’m not mad at them, I want to thank them.”

On Onana’s Instagram profile, there’s a reminder of how he made indignation his fuel, in the hashtag #makethemshutup.

Hoffenheim still came with challenges, such as learning German and living away from his family, and the sleepiness of the town. “In Hoffenheim there were a few thousand people and just … cows,” he grins. “I come from Brussels, a massive city.”

But the club’s development program was excellent, and after starring for their under-18s on a run to the Uefa Youth League semi-finals, he left for first-team football with Hamburg, where, he says, “I grew up even more.” He then joined Lille just after their 2020-21 French title win.

That move was not just about playing in a top flight and the Champions League, but family. Lille is an hour from Brussels and his mother, who suffers from Myasthenia gravis, a rare condition that causes muscle weakness, was badly ill. She has improved since and Melissa’s cancer treatment was successful. She is now a football agent with a stable of players and brokered his move to Everton, coming over, with his friends, to watch him excel in the Merseyside derby.

Why Everton? “My sister and I plan my career and all the clubs I’ve been through are known for developing young players and bringing them to next step,” he says. “The connection between Everton and Belgian players has always been great. I spoke to Big Rom [Romelu Lukaku] and he was like, ‘You’ll enjoy it there, the atmosphere, fans.’ I spoke to Roberto [Martinez], who had a great time here.

“And last but not least I spoke to the manager [Lampard], who played one of the biggest parts in my decision. He was calling me every day. Whatever I needed, he was there for me and he’s still doing that, which I appreciate, because I’ve had several managers but not always great human beings, and he’s a great human being.”

Having recruited Idrissa Gueye as his holding player, Lampard is using Onana as a box-to-box dynamo and in victory away to Southampton he was involved in both Everton goals. “He shows me videos and says, ‘You’ve got to get there, you’ve got to get into the box,’ and he perfected it, arriving [into the box]. He keeps saying, ‘Get in there – and you will score,’ and in his career he just trained, trained and repeated that skill. Manager-wise he’s the perfect match for me.”

Music is how he switches off. He composes on piano and records songs in several styles, including jazz and hip-hop; his talent was showcased in a Belgian film, The Game Changer.

But music is only one hidden passion. “I was really good at school and I liked maths. There were subjects like languages where I didn’t really have to do anything to get good grades, but maths I had to dig in and work hard to understand it. That was kind of a challenge,” Onana says, grinning. “And I’m a guy who likes challenges.”

– The Sunday Times

Originally published as Amadou Onana’s sister was hustling football trials for him even as she fought her cancer battle