Sport’s had a big impact on my life. When I was growing up, all I thought about was sport.
Once you’re on that pitch then there’s nothing else on your mind, all your problems disappear and the only focus is on the ball, nothing else.
I believe that it brings a lot of people together. You can all speak different languages, but you communicate through the ball and that’s all that matters in that moment.
I was born in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa, I grew up in Portugal and moved to London eight years ago, aged 14.
I’ve not personally experienced overt racism while playing sport – you’ll always hear some unkind words, that’s part of sport sometimes, but it’s not been racist with the people I’ve played with.
That’s not to say it doesn’t exist in football, or sport in general, though. We know it does – you can see it on TV happening to players like Mario Balotelli and Raheem Sterling.
There used to be a belief for Black people that if we became professional footballers, that racism wouldn’t be directed at you.
But when you see it so openly on TV, with monkey chants and gestures from the crowd, it shows that whether you’re rich or not, whether you’re a great player or not, it’s still going to happen to you.
It shows that people aren’t abusing you because you maybe live in a poorer area than them, it’s just about your skin colour, and that is really painful.
I try not to think about it often, but it is there and sometimes you can’t avoid it.
ARCA Generation
I had a lot of free time in college and I didn’t have a job, so instead of hanging around doing the wrong things, a friend told me to come and play futsal with him at ARCA.
When I arrived, I met a lot of new people and started coming here more often – it felt like a family.
I’m now part of their workforce diversity project and four months ago I became a youth leader – it’s given me an opportunity to learn as an employee.