Following the Ball: The Migration of African Soccer Players Across the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1949–1975, by Todd Cleveland, is the first academic monograph on the history of the migration of African football players to a European country. It focuses on the experiences in Portugal of footballers from Mozambique and Angola, and a few others from Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Príncipe. Based on extensive archival research and fascinating oral interviews, Following the Ball argues that futebol, an integral part of the cultural fabric of colonial and metropolitan societies, provided African migrants with the means to pragmatically negotiate a better life for themselves in Portugal.

The book is chronologically organized. After a helpful Introduction, Chapter One describes Portugal's African empire and the initial development of football there. The next chapter concentrates on Lourenço Marques (Maputo) and examines the rise of racially segregated leagues and distinctive modes of play. It also explores a process in the 1950s that integrated many of the best mestiço and black players into white clubs, which facilitated their recruitment to play overseas. (This trend also undermined the vitality of African leagues.) Chapter Three explains the causes for the migratory flow of talented footballers of color to clubs in Lisbon and elsewhere in Portugal. The scouting networks and process of signing players are revealed in detail through the interviews, including one with Eusébio — the first African-born global football celebrity — with whom the author spoke just before the former Benfica and Portugal striker passed away at the age of 71. Chapter Four is one of the strongest in the book. It scrutinizes the many challenges faced by immigrant players under the Salazar dictatorship, from emotional ones such as saudade (melancholy, longing for home) to the different diet and climate, the financial struggles, and the hyper-competitive environment of professional sport. Unity and solidarity were vital to adaptation: ‘The social bonds that African footballers cultivated and deepened served to mitigate their saudades, while also lifting their spirits and helping them adjust to metropolitan life’ (154).

A riveting Chapter Five uncovers the ways in which African footballers coped with Portugal's increasingly tense political atmosphere of the 1960s and early 1970s. The vast majority of immigrant players distanced themselves from overt oppositional politics. But some socialized with university radicals from the Casas dos Estudantes do Império (CEI), while others, like the African players at the football club Académica de Coimbra, took part in public expressions of anti-Salazar sentiment. Linked to a campus known as ‘the epicenter of political radicalism’, the Académica club team bravely walked on to the pitch for a 1969 Cup semifinal against Sporting Lisbon wearing black armbands in support of student demonstrations against the regime (196). The independence of the colonies in 1975 after the Carnation Revolution brings the book to an end, but the epilogue notes that the migration of players from Africa to Europe continues to the present. In fact, a passage in the closing pages points out that Portugal's only goal in its victorious 2016 Euro final against France was scored by Eder, a striker born in Guinea-Bissau. This episode reinforces the book's conclusion that ‘the myriad contributions made by these African players have, indeed, rendered Portugal a very rich nation’ (216).

The centrality of African players’ voices and agency in the narrative and the analysis is one of the book's signature accomplishments. As a meticulously researched and engagingly written study, Following the Ball brings the Portuguese soccer empire to life and helps to narrow the intellectual fault lines that often separate Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone African scholarship. On a more critical note, the book's reliance on interviews sometimes appears to articulate an argument based on anecdotes. Also, there is scant coverage of how Portuguese fans, club owners, media, and businesses shaped the local sporting scene and delineated the limits of possibility for African agency in the metropole. These minor shortcomings aside, Following the Ball is an impressive book that makes a significant contribution to the fields of African history, sport studies, and global migration.