This was the bizarre tour of a lifetime, arranged by world football legend Sir Stanley Matthews for youngsters he had trained in Soweto in defiance of apartheid laws.
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“At the airport I was riddled with nerves but tried to overcome them by busying myself shepherding my young charges and allaying their obvious fears. Large, forbidding men in light blue suits and dark glasses with inscrutable looks on their faces watched our every move but, uncomfortable as it was, they never approached us. At any given second I expected us to be rounded up, hustled into vans and taken away to one of South Africa’s infamous police stations but it never happened,” wrote Stanley in his autobiography.
“I couldn’t believe it and neither could Stan’s Men. We were on our way out of the country bound for Brazil, the first ever black football team to tour outside of South Africa.”
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Yet, apartheid followed the youngsters to Rio de Janeiro, in the shape of an intelligence man who sat at the back of the plane.
This strange journey was the work of one of the greatest English players ever. Matthews was the first European Footballer of the Year in 1956, who played top flight football until he was 50. They called him the ‘Wizard of the Dribble’ and he was loved the world over.
For the love of the game Matthews came to South Africa and defied the country’s segregation law to turn township talent into stars. This story is to be told this year in a United States documentary, called Matthews.
In the summer of 1975, Matthews spent months scouting talent from schools in Soweto, Johannesburg’s biggest township, and formed a team called Stan’s Men which he took on tour to Brazil. It was born of a question from a youngster on whether Matthews had ever played against Pelé. This led to an unheard of trip from South Africa. Matthews used his influence to get sponsors in the shape of Coca Cola and the Sunday Times, as well as passports for the boys, against the norms of the time.
“Sir Stan was a brave man, it was unlawful for white people to be in townships at that time but he was in Orlando every week to train us. He would come to our home to meet with our parents. Initially the parents thought we were crazy when we told them about going to Brazil but because Sir Stan was known to them they soon believed we were telling the truth,” says Hamilton Majola, then aged 17.
“During those days, Orlando Stadium was our mecca of football. For the Brazil tour, it was not easy, we trained hard. There were hundreds of talented footballers from all over Soweto but only 15 could be selected. Dedication and discipline were key to Sir Stan,” says Isaac Masigo, another youngster who boarded the plane for Brazil.
March 21, 1975, was the first day of the month-long tour to Brazil. It had taken weeks of hard training that created a good deal of excitement.
“On that Friday, learning in Soweto schools was disrupted… learners were running mad, so many children were bussed to Jan Smuts (OR Tambo International Airport) for our send-off… I will never forget that day, it was surreal,” says Masigo.
On the Boeing 707, destined for Brazil, the lads were anxious and smart. They dressed neatly in tailored navy suits with a gold badge, with Stan’s Men printed on it, blue shirts, navy ties, with red and white dots, and shiny black shoes. Upon arrival in Brazil, they were treated like stars and journalists flocked around them. They felt like stars staying at the Hotel Regina, in Rio, on the famous Copacabana Beach. Most had never seen the sea.
They went to practise with Flamengo Football Club and met Arthur Antunes Coimbra, better known as Zico, who was to star in the World Cup for Brazil. This was one of the players they had only seen on the bioscope, a makeshift cinema back home; televisions didn’t come to South Africa until a year later.
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“Carlos Alberto Pereira, who coached Bafana Bafana in the 2010 World Cup, I met him in 1975. We played and took pictures with Brazilian stars. We trained with big teams like Flamengo, Fluminense, Vasco da Gama and Americana. The culture there was different from what we know in South Africa. The clubs there had coaches for different departments, kit manager, physiotherapist and that was not the case in Johannesburg. We trained from 6AM to noon. There they start training you from childhood, in South Africa we are playing games,” says Masigo.
The first game in Rio was a huge disappointment. The youngsters played alongside their coach Matthews, then aged 60, the first game against Gama Filho University and were drubbed 8-0.
“That was embarrassing; their ball was different from ours. Our dribbling skills couldn’t get us anywhere. They man marked so tight that we couldn’t manage a single goal. Brazilians meant business; our goalkeeper left the field with swollen hands. He cried. If it was not for Sir Stan things could have been worse,” says Majola.
One of the spectators was the white South African intelligence officer who tracked their every move.
“We were followed but we couldn’t see. The security police followed us from the airport to Brazil, they couldn’t trust black boys… One day, on our way to the hotel, a white Afrikaner man shocked us: ‘Ja (yes), you blacks of South Africa, you stay nice here’,” says Masigo.
Although the boys didn’t do anything to warrant jail back home; they broke the rules of Matthews when he wasn’t looking.
“After the training, when Sir Stan was resting, we were free to go the clubs and beach. There was this Copacabana Beach, the best beach in the world. It was women galore, I sweated as if I was running under the sun,” says Masigo.
The Brazilian women in swimwear mistook the African boys, kitted out in red-and-white tracksuits, for Americans, laughs Masigo.
Majola knows Matthews, a teetotaller and vegetarian, did not approve of these outings.
“Sir Stan taught us life values; from the beginning he said we mustn’t go for girls because they would destroy our football future. He warned us against alcohol,” says Majola.
Soon after Brazil, Matthews returned to England but he left a foundation in Soweto. The team continued playing friendly games, outside the country, in Swaziland and Botswana.
“When we returned from Brazil, the Sunday Times, which was one of our sponsors, reported on our tour and one of the headlines read ‘They are now internationals’. There was so much jealousy from other local teams as a result we were not allowed to affiliate to the local leagues. We played friendlies. Things started to get unfriendly. We can’t be pointing fingers now, maybe it was God’s will. The fact Sir Stan left his country and family to share his football skills with us, we had nothing to offer him in return,” says Majola.
“I had seen and experienced what football could do for an individual and I wanted others to realize not only the possibilities that football can bring, but to get in touch with the possibilities that lay within themselves, irrespective of how hard and demeaning their lives were. If I could enjoy such benefit from football, I was determined to show others such benefits existed for them as well,” wrote Matthews.
“It would have been easy for Sir Stan to start a commanding club with us but he was threatened against doing that. Every big company wanted to sponsor our team. We were treated well, we had sponsored transport to all our matches,” says Masigo.
The team dissolved and many went to other clubs. One, Vincent Tsie, Masigo’s only schoolmate on the Brazil trip, found the country’s laws unbearable after the Brazil trip and took off.
“After he saw the life in Brazil he refused to stay in the racist South Africa anymore. In 1976, he went to exile in Canada where he died,” says Masigo.
“I was also tempted to leave but I couldn’t do it because I was the eldest of my siblings and couldn’t leave them. I knew what happened to Kalamazoo (Steve Mokone, the first black South African in the European league who died in exile).” Masigo, now a pensioner, still lives in Orlando.
At 50, Matthews played his last professional game for Stoke City, the town of his birth. He died on February 23, 2002, aged 85. In February, Matthews would have been 101 years old.
His contribution to African football is timeless and will never be forgotten in Soweto.

Soweto To Rio  With A Spy On Your Tail

He may be a bit slower these days, but the ball still sticks to his feet as if it were on a string. Forty years on, Paradise Moeketsi dribbles like the maestro who broke the law to teach him. His name was Sir Stanley Matthews – the black man with a white face who thought the game could overcome all.
On this same Soweto street, then a patch of field, Matthews changed Moeketsi’s life.
<div id="attachment_3390" style="width: 217px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3390" class="size-medium wp-image-3390" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/2669097-207x300.jpg" alt="" width="207" height="300" />Stanley Matthews outside-right for England and Blackpool FC, in action during a match for Blackpool. (Photo by Frank Harrison/Getty Images)</div>
“I was highly influenced by this man. He used to play without any formation. A lot of people say Mandela is the greatest, I disagree; it was him. He was a gentleman; he was never given a yellow card or a red card! He’s phenomenal, out of this world,” says Moeketsi.
Moeketsi was one of Stan’s Men, the team Matthews fostered in Soweto. His teacher was the David Beckham of his time who broke the law on segregation in sport to coach in the township.
Now a football coach in his own right, Moeketsi practises everything that Matthews preached. In his 20 years, the Soweto coach has trained and mentored young players who made it to the South African national team, Bafana Bafana.
“I met [Matthews] when I was very young. I was around 11 and now I’m 51. It was the first time, personally, that I met a white man,” he says.
Matthews’ trained 60 young players under the eye of apartheid police in what was as much about courage as it was about sport.
“It was unsafe, a white man in Soweto; in those days it was difficult. I thought [that] white people were not good, that they were bad people, but I changed&#8230;”
For many of Stan’s Men he was the first white man they had ever seen, if not, he was certainly the first who had been kind to them.
Matthews’ first trip to Soweto was in 1955. Completing his pre-season training with his young wards, he returned to England just as his team, Blackpool, was ready to do battle with Arsenal at Highbury.
According to Matthews’ memoir, The Way It Was, his manager, Joe Smith, was anxiously waiting for him in the team’s hotel lobby.
“Where the bloody hell have you been?” he says.
“South Africa, I rang and told you but you never listen,” replies Matthews.
“When did you get back?”
“Last night.”
“Are you match fit?”
“Yes.”
That day, Matthews, who had kicked his last ball in Soweto, played what is considered one of his best games for Blackpool securing a 3-1 victory. His boots may have lived in England but his heart was in Africa.
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“I had some extraordinary experiences during my time in Africa. In Ghana in 1956, I was crowned King of Soccer&#8230; The initiation was a real crowning as befits a king and left me not a trifle embarrassed. A witch doctor danced around me then spat on a football [that] I had at my feet. I was then seated upon a throne, a crown placed on my head, and my clothes removed and replaced by traditional Ghanaian robes&#8230;”
Matthews travelled through the continent; from Ghana to Zimbabwe but most of his time was spent in Soweto coaching Stan’s Men. He moved to South Africa briefly with his wife, Mila, in the 1970s.
“It was 1975 and apartheid was, of course, still very much in force&#8230; I never had any luck with it and for years had happily stayed in Soweto on my visits there to coach. I simply ignored it and for the most part, I am relieved to say, those misguided people who inflicted it upon that beautiful country chose to ignore the fact that I flouted its rules,” he says in his book
According to Matthews, Stan’s Men were a promising bunch of dreamers who were funded by the Sunday Times newspaper in Johannesburg.
“The boys told me that their dream was to go to Brazil and play football there, though they knew this would never happen.”
Moeketsi and his fellow teammates had a point. It was the height of apartheid, an exit permit for a black football team would have been nigh impossible. Then there was the issue of money, none of their families could afford a passage to Brazil. They believed it was mere fantasy.
Matthews decided to make the trip happen, flouting apartheid to the extreme. He used his reputation and connections to secure money from a Coca-Cola executive and the Sunday Times. A Brazilian airline offered 16 free tickets to Rio de Janeiro.
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Then, Matthews and his men headed for the airport under the threat of arrest.
“I figured that if we turned up at the airport for our flight, the authorities would not prevent us from leaving the country because it would cause a major incident,” writes Matthews.
He was right. They let him go, with the first all-black football team to tour outside of South Africa. The authorities were content to send two secret agents to tail them.
Moeketsi, like many of the Soweto players, couldn’t make the trip.
“My grandfather was worried that I wouldn’t come back so I didn’t go. It was difficult; a once-in-a-lifetime trip and our parents said ‘No!’”
On the flight there, Gilbert Moiola, the 18-year-old team captain, turned to Matthews and shook his hand.
“Stanley, you are a black man with a white face,” he said to his coach, a title coined during the crowning in Accra.
The team arrived to a hero’s welcome and a grand reception. Along with meeting Pélé, they also trained with Brazilian coaches including Zico. Matthews even had tea with the Great Train Robber, Ronnie Biggs, at his Rio apartment, who told him that he was a fan of Charlton Athletic.
The legacy of that remarkable trip, even for Moeketsi who did not go, is strong in Soweto.
“It took so long to forget about him. Even today, he’s still alive in Soweto. His spirit is still with us,” he says.
Matthews died in 2000, just months after he made his last trip to Soweto, before Moeketsi had a chance to say goodbye.
“I asked him to take me to England, but unfortunately he passed away.”
In 2010, the year the football World Cup came to South Africa, Moeketsi finally made the trip to Stoke City, the club where Matthews made his name in the town where he was born. It had been almost four decades since he first saw Matthews gliding across the rough Soweto pitch.
“The important part of it is me being able to fulfil my dream, to lay the wreath on Sir Stan’s grave to say thank you so much… I’d [wanted] to come and thank him and say rest in peace,” he told journalists at the stadium where Matthews’ remains are buried.
Matthews’ daughter, Jean Gough, stood beside him and was clearly touched.
“It’s so wonderful that he’s come all this way just to do this. It’s really emotional for me,” she says as they both battle tears.
On the note attached to the wreath was the farewell that Moeketsi couldn’t deliver in person.
“Sir Matthews, thank you so much for what you did in our country&#8230; I will never forget you.”

Tag: Sir Stanley Matthews

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Soweto To Rio With A Spy On Your Tail

The Black Man With A White Face