Africa-Press – Gambia. The World Cup in Qatar is a meeting point and a place for stories.
Football gives “wings to fly high” to the sky. It is no longer a chimera. It is a reality. Thomas Dengue and Awer Mabil are friends united by history. They were born in the same region and have similar life stories. Since high school, they maintain an inseparable bond: for the first time in their careers, they are competing in the football World Cup.
The defender of Albirex Niigata (Japan) and midfielder Awer Mabil (Cádiz of Spain) are now teammates in the National Team of Australia. They made their debut in Qatar’2022 at Al-Janoub Stadium, in Al-Wakrah.
The two players were born in Kenya but never thought of themselves as Kenyan. His parents were only in the nation famous for mass-producing great marathon runners because they needed to escape the horrors of war.
Both Deng’s family and Mabil’s parents are originally from South Sudan, a country that spent three decades in civil war until independence was recognized by the international community in 2011.
The defender spent six years living in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, before managing to leave Africa and move to Australia. The midfielder was born and raised in a UN-operated refugee camp in Kakuma, where he lived until his tenth birthday. An uncle, who was already in Adelaide, managed to scrape together enough money to fetch the rest of the family.
“I was born in a small tent. My hotel room in the concentration camp for the Cup is much bigger than it. And there, I lived with my whole family. Australia welcomed us and gave us the opportunity to build a better life” , said Mabil.
It was in Adelaide that the future best friends met. They studied at the same school. And, because they have such similar life trajectories and love football, the rapprochement was almost immediate.
Interestingly, they never played for the same club. While Deng started his career at the Adelaide Blue Eagles and turned professional at Western Eagle, from Melbourne, Mabil became a player at another team in the city that received them, Adelaide United.
The pair of friends only met on the pitch for the first time in the Australian Under-20 team, in 2015. Afterwards, they played together in the Under-23 team. And, since 2018, they have been teammates on the honors team.
“There are so many people who dreamed like us, but never had the opportunity to make their wishes come true. That’s why it’s incredible to remember our trajectory, everything that we and our families went through so that we could get here and achieve what we have we always wanted to,” Deng reported.
“Australia is changing slowly, but it is. They are starting to accept people from different backgrounds than they were used to. Now, skin color doesn’t matter so much anymore. What counts is what you are, what you represents and how much he works for his dream”, he added.
In addition to best friends, the “Socceroos” landed at the World Cup with another refugee from the war in South Sudan, the young phenomenon Garang Kuol, aged 18. Born in Egypt, he debuted as a professional only in February, but has already been called up for the Selection and, after the FIFA tournament, he goes to England to defend Newcastle.
The Qatar Championship is the first to be held in the Middle East and features seven of the eight teams that have already lifted the cup. For the second consecutive edition, four-time champion Italy failed to qualify and is the main casualty.
The tournament is played at the end of the year and not in the usual period (June and July) due to the heat in the host country during the height of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
This is the last edition of the FIFA competition with the format that has been used since France’1998. From the next World Cup, organized by the United States, Canada and Mexico, there will be 48 participants in the dispute for the title.
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