“The pitch is my favourite place in the whole world. Football makes me feel like myself.”
Despite his imposing 6’4 (1.96m) frame, Edigerson Eddi Gomes exudes total calmness in both his voice and movement. Yet once the defender crosses the white line and enters the field of play, he is a man transformed. “I’m a bit of a dirty player,” he admitted to FIFA.com, his eyes bright and with a proud smile. “Every team needs one and I like the role.”
Yet despite being something of a self-confessed ruffian, a closer look at the amazing story of the Denmark centre-back and statements like “football makes me feel like myself” and “I like the dirty player role” make perfect sense. “I’m a defender because life has taught me how to defend myself. When you grow up in a slum or a place like that you need to be able to handle yourself,” said Gomes, of Danish nationality but born in the former Portuguese colony of Guinea Bissau, an economically deprived West African nation.
“You need to be strong, to be alert,” he continued. “You can’t make mistakes because they might cost you your life. I think that’s why I like defending and being tough out on the pitch. I’m not in football to make friends. With my team-mates yes, but everyone else… Even if you’re my brother, you’re not my brother for those 90 minutes.
“I used to always play football in the street with the other boys and girls until really late. I’d get home at ten or eleven at night and my grandma would tell me off, but football was my life. For an African child, football offers a life away from poverty."
Gomes left Guinea-Bissau at the age of “six or seven”, but his first destination was not Denmark but his mother’s home in a conflicted neighbourhood in Portugal. “Living in a favela means drugs, dealers, police, shoot-outs, people dying… My dad and my step-mother, who is Danish, used to sometimes come and visit me from Denmark and decided to take me away from that life. They asked my mum and she agreed. It was tough for her but as an African child she knew why I had to leave, in search of a better education and a better life.”
Eddi thus touched down on Scandinavian soil aged 11 and, though faced by a completely different climate and language, soon began chasing his dream of becoming a pro footballer and “one day representing my country”. He claims to have “a good blend in his head” and feels like “a mix between an African and a Dane” but, now and even back then, representing his country always meant Denmark.
It was for that reason that when two months ago his Chinese mobile rang – he plays his club football in China PR for Super League outfit Henan Jianye – and the Danes’ Olympic coach Nils Frederiksen asked him if he wanted to go to the Men’s Olympic Football Tournament Rio 2016, the room began to spin. “It took a couple of seconds for it to register… This is so great; I don’t think I can put it into words. Like my grandma used to say: ‘Keep calm and enjoy the ride’, and that’s what I’m doing. Sometimes I ask myself if this is really happening, if I’m dreaming. But yes, it’s real!”.
Against Iraq, in the first match of the men’s event here at Rio 2016, Gomes played his first competitive encounter in the red of Denmark. “It was incredible! The moment I’d been waiting for most was when the national anthem sounded. I was pretty nervous, but it went great.” Being involved in the Games is indeed quite the turnaround for a 27-year-old who at 19 took a year out of the game, so disappointed was he that “our coach only picked his mates”, and at 24 was still playing for Herlev IF in the Danish third tier.
He moved up to the second division with HB Koge and come July 2014 earned a switch to top-flight outfit Esbjerg, where he spent just six months before being transferred to China. “Everything’s happened really fast in my career over these last three years.”
Though we will never know how his career would have gone had he continued as a goalkeeper, the position he played in his teens and where his then coach felt he had enough potential to succeed. “Every goalkeeper worth his salt is a bit crazy, you have to be a bit crazier than I am,” he said with a smile, on his positional switch. “And I love defending, even the collective notion of it: everyone pulling together to defend a goal. Being a defender is hot! It really gets the adrenaline pumping.”
Next up for Denmark on Sunday 7 August are South Africa and then, on 10 August in Salvador, hosts Brazil. Sitting in the lobby of the team hotel in Brasilia, though, Gomes seemed anything but overwhelmed. “Everyone wants to play against Brazil and I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was going to be fun, but I don’t think it’ll be tougher than the game with South Africa, or the one against Iraq was.
“You can’t take to the field saying to yourself ‘well, it’s Brazil, I ought to be scared now’. I’ve never thought like that in my life. You have to go out and play like you always do,” said Gomes, who intriguingly wants to be a kindergarten teacher after hanging up his boots. “It’s true that I’ll be facing Neymar, one of the best in the world, but he’s human and I am too. And neither of us can do everything on their own. It’s all about the team,” he concluded.