Ajax hopeful to Obuasi hustler: The heartbreaking tale of John Quansah

In the mornings, John Quansah tends to his little trophy cabinet – a trinket from the past that bring back fond yet painful memories of the footballer he once was or could have been. He then waves his son goodbye, takes a short walk to get a tricycle to work.

Known by his close friends as Abebe, he works as a laborer at the government hospital in Obuasi on a temporary basis. As the 40-year-old pushes the wheelbarrow, he wonders where his next source of income will come from. This wasn’t the life he imagined.

“I couldn’t make it to the highest level in football because of injuries. That affected my progress negatively and forced me to return home,” John Quansah told 3Sports.

In 2000, then partners of Goldfields Football Club, Dutch club Ajax Amsterdam selected three teenagers from Obuasi to go through their stringent yet rewarding youth program. Among them, Quansah stood out. He was 15 at the time, but demonstrated pace, trickery and technical ability of a modern-day winger.

“John Quansah is fast and he’s a real winger. The team is short of wingers and the way he improved is good. Congratulations and I hope you get the benefit out of it,” an Ajax coach revealed back in 2000 in a room full of hopeful talents just before Abebe was added to the academy.

Quansah grew confident after each youth tournament winning individual awards and growing with talents like Wesley Sneijder who at the time was also hopeful of making the Ajax first team. The stars were aligning until disaster struck at the Ofori stadium in Obuasi when Quansah was on holidays.

John Quansah went to the Ofori Stadium at the behest of his big sister to train with the then Goldfields squad just weeks before returning to the Netherlands from his holidays.

After taking a few shots in a shooting drill just behind the 18 yard box on the left side of the pitch, he felt some discomfort in his right thigh which later turned out to be his first major injury.

He didn’t know it then, but the pain he felt on this pitch about two decades ago was the beginning of the end of his burgeoning football career.

The injuries recurred. After several failed attempts to get Quansah back into shape, Ajax sent him back to Goldfields, where he struggled to make a mark. The struggle to get back to fitness was a long and arduous one. It never happened and the winger hang up his boots at 21 in 2006. Since then he’s been living from paycheck to paycheck.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Wesley Sneijder made the Ajax senior team in 2002. Eight years later, he won the treble with Inter, reached the 2010 World Cup final with the Netherlands and finished fourth in the FIFA Ballon d’Or voting. It was a tough watch for Quansah and he had to rely on a childhood friend for emotional support.

“You have to be dedicated to it, take your training seriously and manage your body well. When you get injured, don’t let it affect you mentally. I let my injuries affect my confidence, so much so that anytime I recovered, I feared getting another injury. Because of this, I was constantly getting injuries,” Stephen Kwame Addo, John Quansah’s childhood friend revealed.

At sunset, Abebe takes his son to a familiar pitch where the both watch young players run around with incredible level of the exuberance Abebe had as a boy. He watches and smiles – heavy in his own thoughts of what could have been. As he tries to mend the little left from his life, Quansah hopes the next generation of talents do not end up like him.

“You have to be dedicated to it, take your training seriously and manage your body well. When you get injured, don’t let it affect you mentally. I let my injuries affect my confidence, so much so that anytime I recovered, I feared getting another injury. Because of this, I was constantly getting injuries,” Quansah said.

Getting to the top of the professional football pyramid is tough. For Africans, it is tougher and Quansah’s journey is testament of how a poorly managed injury could ruin the possibility of a brilliant football career.

The post Ajax hopeful to Obuasi hustler: The heartbreaking tale of John Quansah first appeared on 3News.

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