📍Clara Town, Monrovia, Liberia
1966 – 1986“George Manneh Oppong Weah was born in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, in October 1966, and grew up in Clara Town, a crowded slum on Bushrod Island, built on a drained mangrove swamp on the edge of the city. His parents separated when he was a baby, and he was raised by his grandmother, Emma Brown, a devout Christian, who brought up thirteen children in a simple house. She was the most important person in his life, and he has always said everything he became, he owed to her. The family was very poor, and George helped out by selling popcorn and collecting bottles to sell, but his great love was football. He played barefoot in the streets and on the sandy pitches of Clara Town, with balls made of rags, against boys from all over the neighbourhood. At about fifteen he joined the Young Survivors of Clara Town, an amateur team so poor it had no coach, and he went on to play for Mighty Barrolle and Invincible Eleven, two of Liberia's biggest clubs, while working as a switchboard technician for the national telephone company. In 1987 he moved to Cameroon, and in 1988 Arsène Wenger signed him for Monaco. He went on to star for Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan, and in 1995 became the first African to win the Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year. He paid for Liberia's national team himself during the civil war, and in 2018 he became president of Liberia. Clara Town is proud that one of its own rose to lead the country.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons