Review: LAST GOAL WINS, Broadway Theatre Catford
The Ryan Calais Cameron Season kicks off with a winner
An astonishing 56 players at the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup were born in Paris - though it’s a bit galling that one of France’s finest, Michael Olise, has White City down as his birthplace. I always joked of my own sons that they would play cricket for Sweden and ice hockey for England, but that hasn’t happened yet and the only time they really have to make a choice is when Eurovision rolls round.
It’s not that easy for most though, football supporting merely an avatar for much more complex ideas about identity, one’s place in the world and the role of heritage and family in one’s construction of a mixed personality. In these grim days, and not just from the lunatic fringe on The Right, that navigation to the individual centredness, that comfort in our own skin we all need, is done under fire, any sign of otherness seized upon and amplified. What a world to live in…
Last Goal Wins by Justice Ezi takes a little from The Bush’s smash hit, Red Pitch and a little from Ryan Calais Cameron’s seminal For Black Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Hue Gets Too Heavy and examines the British African experience through the eyes of three footballers vying for two slots on the Nigerian football squad. First, to each other if not to the administrators who, somewhat blithely, set out qualification regulations about parents and grandparents, they must prove their ‘Nigerianness’. This is a matter decided in culture, in food, in the innate belongingness we sense (or not) in others new to a group.
Benjamin Akintuyosi gives the striker, Victory, a bubbling desperation - at 29, it’s his last chance to show himself in the national jersey to his son back home in London. He has Jerome Ngonadi’s insecure Coach Kamso in his corner, pushing his case with the manager, Zanza, a comically swaggering Kossim Osseni. Whether that connection helps or hinders Victory is moot, but he believes it will tilt the odds back his way.
And he needs it because Youssef is the coming man, the goalkeeper given just the right middle class leaning accent by Alexander Lobo Moreno, one that speaks to a life of opportunities and entitlement and that riles Victory. Yossef is also courted by Morocco, his mother’s nation, and sees such hybrid status as a positive, after all, he’s a cat who always lands on his feet.
Michael is the disruptor, the lilywhite-skinned Englishman who has opted to play for the country of his birth (M. Olise, are you listening - please!) who must prove himself as a Nigerian first and footballer second. Cameron Forrest, who looks a bit like the Arsenal starlet, Max Dowman, has charm to spare and lends Michael the confidence that comes through academy coaching that reinforces the belief that you can bend the world to your will. And a Premier League player is a handy man to have around for sponsorships (even from Shell, blamed for much of the country’s social and environmental problems) and to further Zanza’s ambition to work in the biggest league in the world.
Eze proves an interesting new voice on the London stage, his dialogue rippling with authenticity and packed with humour and poignancy. There’s work to be done to peel the characters fully away from the caricatures, but this is a play that does something that theatre too often suggests is another person’s problem. It makes a show that meets its audience halfway - more than that really - and does not demand that they fit in with theatre, but insists that theatre fits in with them
Last Goal Wins at the Broadway Theatre Catford until 12 July
The Ryan Calais Cameron Season continues in the Autumn with Cranes by Demi Wilson-Smith and How To Keep Warm in Winter by Kaleb D’Aguilar
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