IN A broad Dublin accent, Jimmy Mwanga asks how you found him.
After a brief explanation, the question is turned back on him, how has he found himself where he has in a remarkable career to date.
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It takes him the guts of two hours to answer.
‘The road I’ve taken is not like everyone else’ is quite the understatement.
The second half of this year has been spent in China — where he became the first Irishman to play professional football in that country, for Qingdao Red Lions.
It is doubtful anyone from here has played on both sides of the Cypriot divide either.
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He has also had a stint in Clairefontaine with the Nike Academy, completed a soccer scholarship in the USA and had a spell in Austria.
Next year, one of India, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia is his most likely destination as he begins to reap the rewards for his perseverance and willingness to take risks.
His career has been spent on the margins, a tale laced with broken promises, along with a leaky portakabin and peanut butter and jam sandwiches.
He freely admits that, if he had a child, he would probably advise them against the many leaps into the dark he has taken but, at the same time, he does not do regrets.
Mwanga was born in Johannesburg but remembers little about South Africa before moving to Lucan around the age of six.
He played for local clubs Ballyowen Celtic and Esker Celtic before joining Mountview FC in Blanchardstown to play Premier football.
He was in school with FAI Cup winners Darragh Markey and Conor Kane, and Bradford City’s Ciarán Kelly, but no professional clubs were showing any interest in him.
At 16, when he heard of the Nike Most Wanted trials being hosted by Peamount United he got himself over to Greenogue with little thought given to the fact he did not have the bus fare to get home.
He arrived without a consent form and there was no hope of him getting to his mam or dad at work to sign it and get back in time so he improvised.
Mwanga recalled: “I saw this black fella there watching his son so I told him my story and asked if he would pretend to be my uncle and sign the form.
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“So he came over to the Nike truck with me, started asking, ‘How’s your ma?’ and all that, signed the form and they let me train.”
It was a sliding doors moment. He was the only player selected and, after he cadged a lift back to Lucan, he was brought to Manchester City for further trials where he was one of six chosen to go to Clairefontaine.
He said: “That was the only thing on my mind. I didn’t do much study for the Leaving Cert.
“I’d be up training at 7am before school, making sure I was eating right because it was all I could think of.
They called us the Great Britain team but I said, ‘I’m not from here’ so they changed it to Great Britain and Ireland.”
The French Football Federation’s training base was a further eye-opener. He said: “It’s like a museum, you see Zidane’s room and all that.
“I thought I was a bit out of my league. There were players from everywhere.
“You’d one lad saying he’d been in Ajax’s academy and he asks where you were and you’re saying, ‘Esker Celtic in Lucan’.
“But I’m just thinking, ‘You can have all that but I’ve something you don’t have, I’m going to work my b***s off’.”
He was not initially selected for the academy and a trial with Huddersfield Town did not result in a contract offer.
The striker was back in Dublin training with St John Bosco and probably going to sign there before his dad, smiling, asked him what his plan was.
‘Become a professional footballer’ was the answer at which point his father told him he had been picked by Nike after all and was leaving for St George’s Park in two days.
It allowed him a taste of what others had experienced in professional academies, with the team travelling as far as Russia to play matches at clubs.
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But there was no clear pathway into full-time football so, instead, he went to college in the States.
He said: “They were going to pay for everything and the way my Leaving had gone, it wasn’t a bad idea.
“I spent two years in Eastern Florida State College getting my credits up because I’d so few points in the Leaving and then went to Lewis University in Chicago where I studied Business Admin and Sports Management.”
When he finished, he quickly realised that few professional clubs were willing to invest in a foreign prospect on a student visa.
Mwanga said: “Colleges promise you professional opportunities that just aren’t there. Schools will tell you anything to get you over.
“I didn’t even hang around for my graduation ceremony. I just said, ‘F*** that s***, I’m 21, I’m not getting any younger’.”
He moved to Athens, where a chance conversation in a cafe after a gym session led to a YouTube highlights video being passed on to an agent.
There was a trial with Ethnikos, a Piraeus club which lives in the shadow of Olympiacos.
Mwanga recalled: “They were in the third division and the agent said I was too good for them and said he’d try to get me set up with a club higher up.
“A few days later, he told me there was a Cypriot Second Division club that needed a striker.”
There was little or no research done before he agreed to sign for Olympias Lympion.
He recalled: “I wouldn’t advise anyone to do it but when you’re chasing a dream it’s not the time to stop and rationalise.
“I got to Larnaka Airport and there’s a lad there holding a sign saying ‘Jimmy’.
“So I’m asking, ‘Where am I going to live?’ and he’s telling me it’s a nice place but he doesn’t have a picture.
“But myself and this Argentine lad are dropped to what looked like a container where there’s already a Senegalese lad there.
“They were basically non-liveable conditions. If it rained water came through it.
“Thankfully it didn’t rain much but I never unpacked.
“I was told I’d be there for a few days before I was moved into a proper apartment but it ended up being six months.”
NOT LIVING THE DREAM
He was handed around €300 upon signing.
The young Dubliner had to make it last because he was never paid his salary with his only subsequent pay being the odd goal bonus.
But he first hit the back of the net at the wrong end of the pitch.
He said: “We were winning 1-0, I was brought on, we were defending a free-kick and my body position was wrong. I went to head it but I closed my eyes and it went in.
“They scored again and we lost 2-1. I got a lot of hate with people accusing me of selling the game. I spent that night crying my eyes out.
“I never really told my parents how bad it was. I told myself I was my own man, nobody put a gun to my head to come here and I can’t start crying now.
“But people have this idea of professional football, the glitz and the glamour, and this was the other side.
“We’d been all kind of tricked by the club, the three of us living in that kind of portakabin.
“If I got €50 for scoring a goal that was for the three of us and we got whatever we could, like Coco Pops or pasta, from the market.”
Unsurprisingly, Mwanga changed agents and it was not unreasonable for him to assume that a move to Austria — to join third division side ASK-BSC Bruck/Leitha — would mean better conditions.
He said: “The village was about 40km outside Vienna and I was told I would have an apartment in the city, close to another player, who would drive me to and from training.
“Instead, I was put up in a box room in a hostel.
“I had no cooking facilities so all I had to eat was peanut butter and jam sandwiches.
“The director of football was a spoofer. He rang me one day saying the apartment was ready now and he was going to pick me up.
“He never did and when I saw him the next day he pretended the conversation never happened.”
The club went bust midway through the season.
Whatever financial problems they had were not caused by Mwanga because he received his monthly salary just once in the four months he was there.
He said: “A striker was supposed to leave but he ended up staying and I was put in at right wing-back. I was trying to learn the position off YouTube.
“I worked as hard as I could. A lion with a broken leg is still going to try his best to find food because that is what he has to do and I had to do what I had to do to become the best I could be, regardless of my circumstances.”
ACHILLES TORMENT
The lion comparison became a bit more relatable when he decided that he had had enough of being messed around abroad and it was time to return home, in January 2023, even if his family had all since relocated to Canada.
He said: “Athlone Town were the only club to respond with the offer of a trial.
“I was doing everything — too much — to give myself a chance, doing 15km runs from Lucan into town, or getting up at 5am to train.
“We were playing a trial match and I was going for a shot and I felt something and let out a scream.
“I looked around and there was nobody within five yards of me and I’m like, ‘How did that happen? Someone defo kicked me’.
“Then another player said he heard a snap and I looked at my Achilles and it was gone and I was like, ‘No way this has happened, after the year I’ve had, this can’t be real’.
“I was taken to hospital. I was told it hadn’t snapped fully but the doctor didn’t think I’d be able to play again and I should focus on being able to walk rather than run or change direction.”
In the absence of any family, he was taken in by his friend Jamiu Akandi and his family.
He said: “Everyone needs a Jamiu in their life. We’ve been friends since we were six or seven. He brought me to the gym two days later.
“I was in a big cast up to my knee, in a wheelchair for the first few days and then on to crutches and I just said to myself, ‘What’s stopping you from going to the gym? You have another leg, two arms, a chest and a back’.
“I wanted to show that circumstances can’t defeat me. So I went to a FlyeFit gym.
“Jamiu held the bus for me, helped me get on the bus, went into the gym and when I needed a weight he’d bring it over for me.
“I wasn’t able to walk for nine weeks and when the cast came off my calf was like water in a plastic bag.
“I started walking barefoot in Griffeen Valley Park, as slow as a snail, to connect to the ground.
“My thinking was that’s how babies learn to walk when they don’t have much of an Achilles either.”
PO PIT STOP
As his rehab progressed, his confidence about making a comeback grew.
Given what had happened there before, a return to Cyprus might not have been an obvious choice but he was well looked after by third division outfit PO Ormidias.
Mwanga explained: “I had played against the president’s son when I’d been over before and he liked me. He treated me as his own son.
“They brought me over in June to complete my rehab so I’d be ready to go when the season started in August.”
He did well meaning, come January, he had options. He chose to join Alsancak Yesilova on the north of the island.
He said: “I’d never heard of Northern Cyprus and it’s a completely different place, they speak Turkish, use Turkish currency.
“But I’d been living with two other players in the south, here I had my own apartment, in a nice city and I liked it.
“The team was struggling but I came in, played up front, scored six goals and kept them in the league.”
CHINA CALL
Come the summer, there were offers to go to Egypt and China. He chose the latter but getting there was easier said than done.
He said: “The club I was at didn’t want me to leave. There aren’t any embassies in Northern Cyprus so I would have to go to the south to get a visa for China.
“But they needed to give me papers to cross the border and they wouldn’t.
“When I went to the border anyway I was told I’d have to pay something like €10,000 to leave without the papers.
“I just tried again the next day, hoped it was someone else who would be there.
“It was and they let me through but I had to sign something to say I’d pay that money if I came back to Northern Cyprus so I don’t think I’ll be going back.”
China has, largely, been a positive experience but not without its issues.
He has gone from playing in front of crowds normally ranging from 20 to 100 people to having people seeking his autograph before he had officially signed for Red Lions, a Second Division club.
He said: “The night before the last day of the trial, I took out the journal I’ve had since I left America and I’ve written everything in and said, ‘This could be your last chance’.
“I thought of Peamount and Clairefontaine and just said, ‘Leave everything on the pitch, if it doesn’t work out, you’ll still know you’ve done your best but, Jimmy, you know if you do your best it can’t be a no’.
“I played for the B team against the A team and scored five times so they couldn’t really turn me down.”
EXPERIENCE THERE
The contract presented was not what he was told was on the table before he travelled out but, thankfully, he has been paid and his two goals in seven starts and eight appearances off the bench helped them to avoid relegation.
But he has largely played second fiddle to ex-Arsenal striker Yaya Sanogo and figures their respective CVs had more to do with selection than current form.
He refers to a lack of respect from the coaching staff but stops short of calling it — and mistreatment at other clubs — racist. He said: “That would mean I’m not in control. I don’t want to be victimised.
“For the last game of the season, close to the Russian/Mongolian border, Yaya and the other international players were already gone home so I was the only black or foreign player.
“And it was so cold that at half-time the staff gave the players their jackets to keep warm but I wasn’t given one.
“You can give them the benefit of the doubt but when things like that happen a lot you do question why.”
There is something else he has noticed too which, underlines why, even if he no longer has family there, Dublin will always be seen as home.
Mwanga added: “People don’t understand why I might go back to Dublin rather than Canada where my family are.
“Of course, I want to see them but I’ve been moving every six months for the past few years, with different languages and different cultures and it’s tough.
“Sometimes you just want to reconnect with what you know and Dublin is where I learned everything. It’s familiar to me.
“And sometimes you just want a spice bag. And you can’t get them here. So it’s all a big lie to say they’re Chinese!”
