The Man Who Followed the Ball
Ayi Nii Aryee lived in Clark International Airport for more than a month due to visa problems. How did he end up leading UP to 3 UAAP Championships in 4 years?
It is 2006 and Ayi Nii Aryee is in lockdown.
Every day, he wakes up in a run-down airport in the heart of Central Luzon. Passport confiscated. Documents lost. No permission to leave the premises, or to fly home.
Bimbo, as Ayi’s friends call him, has been living in Diosdado Macapagal International Airport ever since Singapore Immigration forced him on a plane to the Philippines after some visa trouble. It’s been more than a month. He’s chummy with the security guards, the stewards, and just about everyone else in the airport. Day-by-day, he’s noticed his English improving, but in inverse proportion to his foreign language proficiency, he has felt his athlete’s body atrophy in “this country with no football.”
Before his eventual stranding, Bimbo was a midfielder for the Singaporean league’s Sporting Afrique. And before that, he was playing on one of the largest football stages in the world—the Under-17 World Cup in Ecuador, where he represented his home country Ghana. But now, in the latter half of 2006, he’s here. The airport has become his life. His friends in the terminal have even given him a gift both sweet and racially profiling: a basketball.
But that’s the thing about football. You don’t need a hoop and a backboard with a politician’s face plastered on it. Now, Bimbo is doing football tricks with the odd, orange ball—juggling it on parts of his body you didn’t know could juggle— running around patches of dust and dead grass, forgetting for brief moments his troubles—when he’ll get back home, or more importantly for him, when he’ll be able to get back on the pitch.
Fast forward to February 2012: Ayi Nii Aryee is the anchor of a University of the Philippines football team that has won two UAAP championships in three years. And in this year’s tournament, they are going for their third title in four years.
Bimbo is in the midst of the best season in his college career. UP is facing off against the University of Santo Tomas. It’s the match that decides whether UP will get the twice-to-beat advantage in the Finals. Bimbo finds the net in the 10th minute, and again on the 51st minute. The small, wild crowd of supporters erupts. Their best player has come through for them again. UP wins two-nil.
Eventually, they win the championship. Two in a row. Three times in four years. The team is ecstatic. They raise the trophy and celebrate. Bimbo has found footballing brothers in the unlikeliest place.
Bimbo’s transition from footballer-stuck-in-a-terminal to collegiate superstar is the untold story here. The lost years of Christ. The secret behind the magic trick. How the hell did he get out of Clark International Airport? And how did he end up dominating the UAAP within six years?
Bimbo started playing football at the age of seven. He remembers because, in Ghana, they have football leagues for all age groups. Not just tournaments. Full-blown leagues. At nine years old he was following the national youth team around, carrying balls and helping out with training. “I just followed the football,” he says.
In Ghana, the kids are all talented and fast. But even there, Bimbo was talented and fast. He followed the football all the way to the national team—and then to Singapore, where he went pro at eighteen.
“I know I can’t play football for my entire life so I want to study [in Singapore],” Bimbo says. But he needed a student visa, and what he had was a work visa. And in Singapore, it was one or the other.
“So I terminated my contract and took the student visa. Then they asked me to go out of the country so they could process the visa.” he says.
He chose to visit the Philippines. Why? Because Ghana was too far, and he had some Filipino fans in Singapore who told him we have good schools here. So he checked it out. He stayed in Sofitel for nine days, before making a profound realization: it wasn’t more fun in the Philippines. Not yet at least. He hated it here, he says.
“I didn’t find anything interesting. Everywhere I go, no football. They kept asking me: ‘Do you play basketball?’”
This was 2006, a distant era when Century Tuna didn’t put up Phil Younghusband-Angel Locsin billboards all over EDSA; and it sounds about right. I suppose it’s true what Ricky Chan, his manager, says: “His entire life is football. About eighty or ninety percent of his friends are from football. And that’s how he introduces himself to everyone: he’s a footballer.”
To Bimbo’s shock and horror, he was sent back in land of no football rather quickly—because of a vengeful ex-employer who had some clout with Changi airport immigration.
“They had to force me to a plane going to the Philippines.”
“And then after, at Philippine immigration, they also said they’re not going to allow me [in]. I said: ‘Why? Why is this happening? I don’t have any case with you guys.’”
“The secret there was they were demanding for something: money. But I was so stubborn. I was a bit arrogant. I tried to challenge them. I knew I was innocent.”
Which explains his thirty-seven day stint in an airport in Clark. He was ultimately shook awake by a Malaysian pilot, who came up to him and said: “Hey, if you don’t do something, they’re going to keep you here and you’re going to rot.”
Bimbo then wrote to the Philippine Star, and before he knew it, he was being interviewed by reporters amazed by his cinematic story. His situation reached the right people; and that was the time when Bimbo began to realize that there is football in this country—a time when his travails with the worst of the Philippines would be balanced out by encounters with some of our country’s best.
“There was one man called Rafael Rodriguez. And then Dominic Samson. They read about the story, and they went all the way to the airport to talk with me. They even brought me a real football.”
“They told me they would try and help me out. Then I play with their club. But there’s no money. They just play for fun. They knew my ambition was to study, so they would also try to get me into one of the universities that I want.”
“We kept in touch. They were calling and texting me—talking to the immigration officers. They visited four times. They made affidavits and took care of everything. They said I had to go back to Ghana before going back here. They were a bit discouraged because they thought I would not go back here.”
But Bimbo refused to forget a promise.
“They paid for my ticket to go back home, then to go back here. One thing about Ghanians: When someone does something for you, you come back.”
The major issue when Bimbo came back, however, was who won the university footballing sweepstakes. He tried out for Ateneo, but the school was adamant that he take a theology course. “I have no idea of becoming a pastor,” Bimbo says, laughing. So Bimbo took mental note of Ateneo’s apprehension to let him study what he wanted, then tried out for UP’s team—and ended up being the best ranked of thirty trialists. The rest of this story can be found in the UAAP record books.
This anecdote on choosing a school, however, probably explains why, when he scored against Ateneo back in 2009, he took off his shirt, revealing a white body suit with the words “I BELONG TO UP” on it. He got a yellow card, but he belonged all right. In any football pitch, Ayi Nii Aryee belongs.
Bimbo’s time in UP is up. He ended his final season with honors—being awarded Best Midfielder. But after the championships—after he finishes his Sports Science Degree—what’s next?
“I don’t know,” he says, apart from continuing to coach kids. He began teaching kids in his little brother’s school in Ghana, and he’s still teaching kids now. It’s safe to assume that, wherever he goes, he’ll be teaching kids—not just about the fundamentals; but also about how not to roll on the floor screaming “Penalty!” each time life brings you down—about how to succeed in anything.
Bimbo has already gone from his home country to Singapore, to a ramshackle terminal in a country like ours, where football is growing, in small part because of him. But that’s how it’s supposed to be. We do what we can by doing what we love. In the end, Ayi Nii Aryee, for all his awards and championships, is just another player who’s happiest on the pitch, in love with a game that is beautiful beyond measure, following it wherever it takes him.
This article was originally published in a 2012 issue of Rogue Magazine.