Tonton Zola Moukoko told me.<\/a> “I gave my passport to the officer. He was shocked. ‘Are you really Tonton Zola Moukoko?’ he asked. ‘You can’t be the one that was playing at Derby!'”<\/p>\nMoukoko’s legend travelled far and wide, carried on fans’ forums and whispered between Championship Manager anoraks. And there was truth in its roots.<\/p>\n
Derby beat AC Milan and Bologna to sign the 15-year-old from Djurgardens in Sweden, where he moved from Democratic Republic of Congo to live with his brother after losing both parents.<\/p>\n
He was a fledgling star in County’s academy, whose attributes on the game would see him grow into a skilful number 10 in the mould of Lionel Messi, often ending up at Europe’s biggest clubs.<\/p>\n
At real-life youth or reserve games, fans would ask for his signature. But Moukoko never made a senior appearance at Derby. The death of his older brother saw him return to Sweden, and he spent his career in the lower Scandinavian leagues.<\/p>\n
“Things happened around me which changed me a lot, changed my football career,” he said. “I didn’t really enjoy football any more.<\/p>\n
“I found it very difficult to sleep for a long time after my brother died. Football was not the right thing for me after that.”<\/p>\n
Moukoko is happy, though, that his legend endures among those who signed him on the game: “Still now, I have people calling from Australia, France, all over the place.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"3. Tonton Zolo Moukoko (Championship Manager 01-02) “We went to a small village in Malaysia,” Tonton Zola Moukoko…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":648902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-648901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}