Interview with Stefano Cusin, the Italian globetrotter who’s on a quest in Africa

Paul Grech

30th May 2022 | 1:17 PM

In an interview as the head coach of the South Sudan National Football Team, globetrotting Italian manager Stefano Cusin opens up on his experiences around the world, his beliefs, and his love for challenge in a country still struggling in the aftermath of an independence struggle and civil war.

Stefano Cusin: The Football Nomad
Art by Shivani Khot

For most of a playing career that lasted more than two decades, James Moga was—measured against a global scale—a nondescript striker playing in nondescript teams. Perhaps a more charitable way of describing him is as a journeyman footballer who played for fourteen clubs in six countries.
And yet it was not a career without remarkable moments.

There were league titles, promotions, and cup successes peppered throughout. But any player can boast of those. Not many, however, will have experienced anything like the highlights of Moga’s career that came on July 10, 2011, when he scored the first goal in the history of the South Sudan national team in a friendly against Kenyan Premier League side Tusker, and the other a year later, when he scored again in their official debut against Uganda. To this day, he is considered one of his country’s best players.

However, the mere fact that he still remains South Sudan’s top scorer with six goals in eighteen games says a lot about football in the country. Twice the youngest African nation has made it to the qualifying group stage of the Africa Cup of Nations, but the results there have been largely dismal: 11 defeats and just one win.

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