Jadou: A rising Syrian star emerging from the flames of war

On the training ground of ravensburg, a member of the fifth division of German football, there is such a special teenager. He deftly stopped the ball with his chest, continued to lean back, rolled the ball to his face, stopped the ball with his mouth, and after standing up straight, the ball rolled back down the body to his feet. He grinned a big smile every time he succeeded, reminiscent of his idol, Cristiano Ronaldo. His name is Mohammed Jaddou and he is the captain of the Syrian U16 national team.

The 17-year-old Jadou is not just a rising football star in Syria, he is also one of Asia's brightest rising stars. He led the team to help Syria reach the semi-finals at the U16 Asian Championships in Thailand last year.

But Jadou will not play for Syria again, he can't be a national hero like Langdon Donovan, Fabregas, Klose and many players who will play for the country in the future, he gave up on that dream because he is now a refugee. After trekking 3,500 miles, across mountains and over the ocean, just to escape the war, he now trains in a quiet town near Lake Constance.

Speaking about the two-month escape that nearly cost him his life, Jaddou said: "No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't forget it all, and we witnessed death with our own eyes. ”

Jadou is now living in a small Bavarian town near the picturesque Lake Constance, living with his father Bilal, his uncle Zakalia, and three fellow Syrians who have also fled.

They have all fled here in political asylum, which means that they are not allowed to leave the area without the permission of the German government during the first three months of their arrival. Jaddou had to get permission to train three times a week in Ravensburg, 30 miles away.

Life in the town is as bland as boiling water, and they don't have much to do. Zakaria spends hours dissecting the cigarette and then pulling it out and rolling it into a finer cigarette. "This tobacco is very, very expensive." He said.

Jadou grew up in the port city of Latakia in northwestern Syria. "The most beautiful city in the world." He said proudly. He was discovered at the age of 8 by the local club Hutten, a member of the Syrian League. His outstanding performances in Hutten led him to receive a call from the Syrian national team youth team.

"I focused on playing football and didn't think much about school." "I love football even more than my parents," he said. ”

As the war swept across the country, soccer became increasingly difficult to play. Although Syria was able to continue, fifa ruled that it was disqualified from hosting home matches due to the dangerous domestic environment in Syria. Young players like Jadou had to cross a dangerous road to Damascus for training matches.

Jadou said his team's bus was attacked twice along the way, and militants even threatened him for playing on behalf of the national team that sided with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"When I left the camp, I was threatened with death, I was threatened with sniping or missile bombardment." "Our football stadium has also been bombed with missiles several times, so even when we play on the pitch we are in danger of life," he said. ”

At first, Jaddou felt that even going to Damascus was too dangerous, "the way to Damascus is too dangerous, I may be killed at any time." He said, but he also said he couldn't live without football in his life.

By the time Syria traveled to Thailand for the U16 Asian Championships, they had already lost a player in the war. Tarek, 15, who was Jadou's roommate and best friend, died in a mortar attack in Homs.

Jaddou still has pictures of Tarek's body on his phone, "I cried for two whole days. He said.

But Jadhu still performed well in Thailand, bringing the team to the semi-finals and successfully qualifying for the U17 World Cup. Jadou was sent off in the semi-final against South Korea and Syria lost 1-7.

After that, Jadou decided it was time to leave, he had tried to fly to Germany, which he had dreamed of since he was a young man, but at the airport, he was told that the entire Syrian team was on the no-fly list. The Syrian Football Federation did not respond.

Jadou's father then sold his house and raised $13,000 for the smuggler's offer, and Jadou smuggled himself to Turkey with the rest of the world, then to Italy by boat. Nearly 2,000 people died in the first four months of the year when they tried to cross the Mediterranean by boat, the International Organization for Migration said.

The ship was only 70 feet long, but it was packed with more than 130 passengers — men and women, old people and children, healthy people or sick people , all crowded into the cabin, and six hours after leaving the Turkish coast, the ship began to sink.

"We had to throw away everything around us — food, clothes, or proprietary goods — so the boat could float." People kept scooping out the flooded water with their hands. "We haven't slept for a second, and if we did, we would definitely drown."

Like the tens of thousands of immigrants and refugees who eventually set foot on Italian soil, Jadou and his family pressed their fingerprints first and were eventually allowed to leave. "We see nearly 10,000 people coming every month," said Ziara Montado, who also ended up as a member of Médecins Sans Frontières in Sicily, who also knows Jadou.

"He's a young man with a bright future in his country, but he has no choice but to flee." He said.

Jadou, his father and uncle traveled north along Italy, hiding from the police until they reached Milan. They slept at a train station in Milan and gave the last penny of their money to the traffickers, who agreed to send them to a refugee camp in Munich. After arriving at the camp, they were sent to their current location, the town outside Upper Stauffen.

When the daughter of the mayor of Upper Stauffen heard that a young Syrian player lived nearby, she contacted a former Croatian player who owned a bar in the town and was also a football agent. After a few phone calls, Ravensburg invited Jadou to training.

"Even though we didn't know him, we decided to invite him to training," said Ravensburg club u19 coach Marcus Wolf Angel, who said Jaddou amazed the entire coaching staff.

"Our players were even more surprised," Wolf Angel said, "and 15 minutes later, a player came up to me and said, 'We should take him with us next season.'" ’”

Jadou didn't speak much German, so in training sessions, he often had his roommates translate for him. Several Bundesliga teams have expressed interest in Jadou after seeing him perform, but Wolf Angel still wants Jaddou to stay in Ravensburg, at least for now. "We all believe he can bring us so much joy."

In a few months, Jadou will hold a refugee eligibility hearing, which will decide whether he can stay in Germany. He was afraid that he would be sent back to Italy, where he would have a harder time bringing back his mother and two younger brothers who had been left in Latakia.

"I hope to start the hearing as soon as possible so that I can get them out of that place of destruction, kidnapping and humiliation as soon as possible and take them to Germany, which is safe." "Now I could hear of their deaths at any time," he said. His words were full of worry, because "both younger brothers are very young and can easily be kidnapped." ”

At the end of a day's training session, Jaddou was the last to walk, and during the 45-minute journey back home, he kept flipping through the photos on his phone, which had memories of Latakia, family portraits of his past, teammates who had passed away, and family portraits of the national team in Thailand last year. He finally stopped his hand on a picture of Ronaldo, the player he had been expecting to one day be able to play against.

"If God has given everything his destiny," he said, switching his phone to music mode and listening to the Arabic pop music that made him homesick, "then maybe I could even be better than him." ”

(Editor: Yao Fan)