When William Troost-Ekong wanted to set up his own foundation, there was only one place it could be located. Having first visited his father’s home town of Uyo in Akwa Ibom state as a child, the Nigeria captain was given a particularly special welcome when he returned last summer for a charity tournament he had organised.
“My surname, Ekong, really resonates with them because it’s from a very specific place,” says the former Watford defender, who plays for Al-Kholood in Saudi Arabia, the eighth country he has lived in during a career that began in Tottenham’s academy after he attended a state boarding school in Hertfordshire. “I had a chance to visit my late grandparents’ house where they still had loads of pictures of us from when we were kids. The last time I was there, I was about four years old, so to get back there again and to now have a better understanding of what that actually means was something really special. You connect with that in a deeper way.”
The Troost-Ekong Foundation, established after he was named player of the tournament at the Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast last year, has been supporting local orphanages and has provided equipment to help local children return to education and resources for a group of under-15 teams in the region.
“We would love to have one representative team from the state that can also play different tournaments within Nigeria, and hopefully maybe even abroad, to see if we can get some exposure for those kids,” says Troost-Ekong, who received the philanthropy and humanitarian award at the Nigerian Sports Awards last month for his foundation’s work.
“There’s a lot of opportunity, especially bearing in mind that Nigeria is the biggest populated country in Africa, one of the biggest economies, so there is a lot of talent. But there’s also a lack of pathways so that was an easy decision to say: ‘OK, that’s something that we want to change.’”
He adds: “Football is so important but there’s also an importance of giving the kids that want to develop and go to Europe a basic education standard. For example, we are working together now with a school called Topfaith to try to see if we can introduce a scholarship programme similar to the one I went to with Tottenham Hotspur, maybe in the UK.”
Troost-Ekong, born in the Netherlands, went to Hockerill Anglo-European college in Bishop’s Stortford at the age of 12 and joined Tottenham’s academy three years later after a spell at Fulham. He credits the school and Spurs for developing his leadership skills.
“It probably started as always wanting to have control, which I kind of had to learn to let go a little bit and understand the importance of delegation,” he says. “I don’t know if I’d say control freak, but I like control. I always find it easy to speak with players – for my position, that’s also something that’s really important. You have to organise the team, organise the game. If I talk about the role specifically with the national team, I have an understanding of what it’s like being in Nigeria when you’re younger and I can also relate very much to the boys that are born in the diaspora. So I kind of felt myself become a middle piece in that way.”
Troost-Ekong has just launched the Power & Purpose podcast with Maro Itoje, the England and British & Irish Lions rugby captain. It delves into what makes a good leader – a subject close to their hearts.
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“It has been a big journey for me and I’m still on the journey now,” he says. “Maro is someone that I admire. I think he’s done so many great things. We relate on different levels, not only from our Nigerian background, but also the stage of a career that he’s in now. It was a great way for people to get an insight into what it’s been like for Maro and myself in the last years to grow into positions where you have a voice and people want to listen to what you’re saying.”
A thirst for knowledge that began at school prompted Troost-Ekong recently to take a Harvard Business School course designed for athletes, and he has been trying to learn Arabic since moving to Saudi Arabia last year, having mastered Italian during his spell at Udinese. Al-Kholood, based in the desert city of Al-Rass but with a potential relocation to Riyadh mooted, are the first foreign-owned club in the Saudi Pro League after being bought by American investors in the summer.
“Last year was the year where I really had to adapt,” Troost-Ekong says of his move from the Greek side Paok. “It was a big change. Of course the financial part made it very interesting. But the experience I’ve had so far in Saudi Arabia, the players that you play against and what they’re trying to achieve here … It was a great chance to be part of something like this.”
In a few months in Morocco, Nigeria will have another opportunity to become African champions after losing in the last final despite some heroic performances from Troost-Ekong on the way. But of more immediate concern for the Super Eagles are their hopes of reaching next year’s World Cup. Éric Chelle’s side are third in their group heading into the final two qualifiers against Lesotho and the leaders, Benin. They need to win both to stand a realistic chance of qualifying and, even then, the odds appear to be against them.
“We still very much believe we can go to the World Cup,” Troost-Ekong says. “There’s been a lot of change within the team; we started the campaign already before the Afcon. We had one manager that went after Afcon and then we changed again, and then we changed again. So I think trying to find that consistency has been an issue for us. But with the players that we have and the mentality of the team, there’s still a great spirit and mentality to try to push. We owe that to ourselves and the country to do that until the last moment.”
