Forward discuses his remarkable journey from playing at Wembley with Hereford to aiming to upset Ivory Coast
Back in February 2013, a young footballer in Sierra Leone generated a brief ripple of acclaim on social media. The footage was slightly grainy but clear enough to see Mustapha Bundu taking the ball to the byline and, as a tackle flew in, chipping the Promising Stars Under-18s goalkeeper with an improbably angled rabona that swerved, floated and dropped into the far corner. There was a fleeting pause while those watching absorbed what they had witnessed; Bundu assured his coaches at the Craig Bellamy Foundation that he had meant it and they knew his oeuvre well enough to believe him.
Internet sensations come and go with dizzying frequency nowadays but Bundu, who was 15 at the time, has lasted the course. On Sunday he will start on the right wing for Sierra Leone against Ivory Coast in a match that could seal his team’s place in the Africa Cup of Nations knockout stage.
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