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Robson Sharuko-Senior Sports Editor

FIVE years after an immigrant from Guinea Bissau scored the goal, which handed Portugal their maiden Euro title, the boys plucked from the remnants of the old empire, have started the latest championship with a bang.

On July 10, 2016, Ederzito Antonio Lopes, banished the horror of growing up in an orphanage, and the trauma of a father serving a life sentence in an English jail, for murdering his stepmother, to score the goal, which decided the Euro final, in Paris.

Known simply as Eder, he was dubbed a flop at English side Swansea City, after 13 appearances in the English Premiership, without a shot on target.

But, in his country’s biggest match, in history, Eder rose from the bench to score the only goal of the final as the Portuguese silenced the home nation, France, with a 1-0 victory.

Incredibly, it was his first international goal, for his country, where he arrived as a two-year-old, before being taken into an orphanage, six years later, because his poor family could not afford his upkeep.

“I moved to Portugal when I was two years old, so I don’t remember living in Guinea-Bissau,’’ he told ESPN. 

‘’My family moved to Lisbon so that we could live in better conditions, and have a better way of life. 

“I didn’t really grow up with my family, I was in an orphanage, without my parents, things can go badly in those places.’’

After Mozambican superstars, Eusebio and Mario Coluna, started the conversion of players, drawn from former colonies into Portuguese internationals, in the early ‘60s, this was the finest hour, of this enduring romance.

With Eusebio having died, two years earlier, at the age of 71, the triumph in Paris, orchestrated by a goal scored by a diamond picked from a former Portuguese colony, situated on the West African coast, could not have come at a better time.

Five years later, the Euro Championships are back, with the tournament finding a way to fight back, after being delayed for a year, by the Covid-19 outbreak.

‘’Whoever wins or loses, Euro 2020 will show a continent whose nations are in the throes of another of its periodic demographic shifts, above all, the new migrations from Africa and the Caribbean,’’ football writer, David Goldbatt, wrote in The Guardian newspaper of the United Kingdom.

‘’Men’s football continues to draw its stars from a narrow pool of predominately working-class young men, where ethnic minorities are already overrepresented and, for whom, the game offers a rare set of plausible role models and an accessible career path. ‘’

World champions France, who lost in the 2016 Euro final, started their latest campaign, to win another European football title, with a 1-0 group win over Germany in Munich, on Tuesday night.

Manchester United midfielder, Paul Pogba, was named the star-of-the-match, in a description of the person who illuminates the game, which is gender sensitive, when compared to the old man-of-match reference.

Although Pogba was born in France, he could have qualified to play for Guinea, the West African country which his parents left, to settle in France, just a few years before his birth.

His brother Florentin was born in Conakry, the Guinea capital, and plays his international football for the West African country, featuring for them on more than 20 occasions.

Pogba’s other brother, Mathias, has also been featuring for Guinea and has more than five caps.

“It was a dream for me,” Pogba told Manchester United’s official podcast. “It was a dream when I started with the national team in France. I always wanted to play for France.

“My brothers played for Guinea, but I wanted to play for France. They were born in Guinea, and they always said ‘we’ll take care of Guinea and you take care of France’.’’

Pogba’s close friend, Romelu Bolingi Lukaku, was named the star-of-the-match as one of the Euro 2020 favourites, Belgium, got off to a flying start, with a 3-0 win over Russia, in St Petersburg.

The big Inter Milan forward scored twice, in that match. 

Born in Antwerp, Belgium, Lukaku could have been eligible to play for the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country which his father, Roger, played for, including featuring in a ’96 AFCON qualifiers against the Warriors, in Kinshasa, in February, 1995.

Roger was one of the scorers, as the Congolese hammered a Warriors side, depleted by the withdrawal of many of their regular players who chose not to travel after the outbreak of the Ebola virus, 5-0. 

Despite his impressive scoring record for Belgium, Lukaku has, at times, been left frustrated by the way he has been treated by his team’s fans.

‘’When things weren’t going well, they were calling me Romelu Lukaku, the Belgian striker of Congolese descent,’’ he told the Players Tribune.

‘’If you don’t like the way I play, that’s fine. 

‘’But, I was born here. I grew up in Antwerp, and Liège and Brussels. I dreamed of playing for Anderlecht. I dreamed of being Vincent Kompany. 

‘’I’ll start a sentence in French and finish it in Dutch, and I’ll throw in some Spanish or Portuguese or Lingala, depending on what neighborhood we’re in.

‘’I don’t know why some people, in my own country, want to see me fail. I really don’t. But, it’s cool, those people weren’t with me when we were pouring water in our cereal.’’

Austria’s skipper, David Olatukunbo Alaba, was named start-of-the-match, when his country started off their Euro 2020 campaign with a 3-1 win over North Macedonia.

He could have played for Nigeria because his father George is a Nigerian prince, who arrived in Vienna to study Economics, before joining the country’s military and becoming a musician and a disk jockey.

Raheem Sterling, who was born in Kingston, to Jamaican parents, was the standout player for England, in their 1-0 win over Croatia, while Denzel Dumfries, the star-of-the-match for the Dutch, in their 3-2 victory over Ukraine, even once played for the Aruba national team, in a friendly, against Guam.

Alexandre Isak, who was outstanding in attack for Sweden in their goalless draw against Spain, including hitting a post, is the son of immigrants from Eritrea.