Barcelona40 years ago now, in the summer of 1982, Thomas N’Kono signed for Espanyol after becoming one of the sensations of the World Cup that had just been held in Spain. The Cameroonian, who has just turned 66 and says that he still maintains the illusion of continuing to train goalkeepers, reviews in an interview with ARA the operation that led him to be the first African goalkeeper to play in Europe .
He was the starting goalkeeper of the Cameroon national team in the first World Cup that his country contested. How did that tournament change your life?
— The World Cup in Spain changed everything. I was already known in Africa, but that appointment introduced me to the world. It was the culmination for a group of players who knew each other very well because we had been winning everything at Canon Yaoundé for a decade. In that World Cup we were unlucky and we deserved more, we could have won Peru and Poland, but we lacked experience. We found ourselves in an environment that we were not used to, because we were amateur players playing against professionals. The chasm was very large.
In what conditions did they play in Cameroon?
— Of the 22 selected, only two or three were professionals. The rest we didn’t charge anything. I had another job in an office, although I was there maybe only a couple of weeks over the course of a year. I was always concentrated with the national team or with the club, who had to ask permission from the company so that I could participate in the concentrations, and they compensated us for the salary we lost in our jobs.
The World Cup made him known. Did you get many offers?
— After the World Cup, a match was played in New York between a team from Europe and a team from the rest of the world. I was selected together with spectacular players, such as the Brazilians Zico, Falcão, Sócrates and Pelé, who was a guest of honor. From then on they offered me the possibility to come to Spain. I was close to signing for Racing de Santander, but that deal fell through because they refused to accept a clause that required them to let me go and play for the national team when I was called up.
I showed that an African goalkeeper could play with the best in the world”
what happened then
— I told my wife that we would go to the first club that came. I received three more offers: from Espanyol, Fluminense and Flamengo. I wanted to play as a professional, and luckily the first offer was from Espanyol, my destiny was to come here. One of the representatives of the most important players of that time in Catalonia, Ramon París [desaparegut el 17 de juliol], came to look for me in Cameroon by order of Espanyol. He negotiated the transfer, which was closed for around 10 million pesetas. Previously, Barça had also been interested in me, to join the subsidiary, but they did not want to pay the money they were asking for me.
It is now common to see young standouts making the early jump to Europe. But at that time, at the age of 26, did he imagine ending up in a European club?
— No, by no means. We didn’t have that perspective, least of all me, who played goalkeeper. People are not aware of the difficulties we had at that time, when only two foreigners could play in Spanish clubs. And the choice of foreigners was key for all the teams, because they were the players who made the difference. Barça had Maradona and Schuster and, at Espanyol, Lauridsen and I were the ones who had to contribute and win points.
How was his adaptation to Barcelona and Espanyol?
— We had very little information about the Spanish League, all we knew about it was what we read in French magazines like France Football, which basically published the results and the ranking. When I arrived in Barcelona I was surprised that the streets were empty, because many people had gone away on vacation. At first I lived in a hotel near the club’s offices, on Carrer Còrsega, but I asked the club to look for my family. Maybe they thought I wouldn’t come back, because they had Juan Segura Palomares accompany me.
He was the first African goalkeeper to play in Europe. How was it to be a pioneer?
— At that time I didn’t attach importance to it because I really love football and I lived it in a different way. For me it was a challenge to be able to show that an African goalkeeper can play with the best in the world. Then other goalkeepers arrived, such as Carlos Kameni, but it was already another era, in which the paths had been opened for African goalkeepers.
Clemente scolded me for the way I stopped the balls, but I was in charge on the field”
He experienced one of Espanyol’s best moments in history.
— At that time we were not aware of the difficulty of the qualifiers we were overcoming in UEFA after finishing third in the League. A large group was formed, coinciding with the beginning of politics Yes, plants and the addition of good players from outside, who we played together for ten years. We still keep in touch in a WhatsApp group, 88. Despite losing the final, we gained a great friendship. We were a big group. We also had good coaches, like Clemente, who sometimes scolded me for how I stopped the balls with one hand. It depended on my inspiration and how I saw football, a different conception from the European one. I was in charge during the game.
What memories do you have of Sarrià?
— It was very painful to say goodbye to Sarrià, because we achieved important things there and experienced European nights there that we will never forget. Sarrià had special things, from the games at five o’clock in the afternoon to the scoreboards, the public parking next to the players or the fact of meeting and being able to talk to players and journalists in the corridors. It was a different time. A member of the club, Júlia Contreras, came to training every day and asked me how I was doing. It helped me get to know the city better and almost ended up becoming part of my family. I told her she was my white mother. We lost her a year ago and it was painful, because her family had abandoned her and I was in charge of taking care of her until her last days.
He also contested the 1994 World Cup in Italy. Was it very different?
— Yes, it was very different because of the preparation, although those of us who played in Europe were already used to a level of demand that those who came from Cameroon suffered more. We had more professional players playing abroad and we trained in Yugoslavia with a Russian coach, Valeri Nepomniasxi, who was very tough because he worked a lot on the physique. But when you see that you are getting the results, you no longer attach importance to the hardness of the training. We were very close to reaching the semi-finals of the World Cup. With just a few minutes to go, we were knocked out by a questionable refereeing decision. But that success gave strength to the Confederation of African Football to claim African football, which went on to have five places for the following World Cups. We changed history.
The elimination of Cameroon in that World Cup made a 12-year-old Italian boy, Gianluigi Buffon, cry, who later admitted that he admired him.
— It wasn’t until 1999, when I was playing for Parma, that I found out, when he came to the game that was held as a tribute to me in Cameroon. He was introduced to me by Patrick M’Bouma, who told me he would be the next goalkeeper for the Italian national team. Shortly after he signed for Juventus. He is a great person, very humble, and still playing very well at 44 years old. Before we didn’t have nutritionists, doctors, massage therapists or gyms. The second coach did what he could to train us. Goalkeepers are lucky now. If they take care of themselves and are lucky with injuries, they can continue to play into their 40s. They lose speed, but they know exactly what they can and cannot do. Mental anticipation is faster than gestural.
