From grief and silence to glory on the pitch — Santos Monto tells feature writer Christopher Okoye how his journey with football gave him a voice.
Santos Monto sat at the edge of the football pitch, his boots muddy and his laces half-tied. The sun was nearly gone, casting long shadows on the grass. His teammates were packing up and laughing as they walked to the changing rooms. Santos stayed behind, taking in the moment and enjoying the cool air. The match had ended in a close 2–1 win. Monto had scored the winning goal for his team.
Perseverance. Reward.
Santos Monto, 18, hadn’t always believed he belonged on the pitch. His path to this moment had been anything but smooth.
At nine years old, his life changed in an instant when his mum was killed in a car crash on her way back from a wedding. With an absent father, no siblings, and no close relatives nearby, he was taken in by his aunt, Mercy, a care worker who spent more nights at the hospital than she did at home. She took him in without hesitation, but life with her was hard. Meals were rushed, there was little emotional support and their conversations were often brief and functional.
Still, she tried. She made sure his uniform was ironed, remembered his birthday, and left notes on the fridge with reminders like, “Be kind. Drink water.” But Santos could feel the weight of the world pressing down on her.
At school, Santos was quiet. A stammer had haunted him since early childhood, making every spoken sentence a battlefield. He hated having to read out loud or answer questions in class. Most people mistook his silence for coldness. Others laughed when his words caught in his throat.
So he didn’t speak much. But he watched. And when the ball rolled across the playground, he came alive.
“Football became a place where I didn’t need words,” he says. The game didn’t care how fast he spoke — only how fast he moved. He’d spend hours practising alone, running drills in the alleyway behind his block or kicking crumpled cans and paper against brick walls. The ball became his voice.
One afternoon in Year 9, Coach Sadiq spotted him playing in a scrappy lunchtime game. Santos had just made a clever turn, slipping past two defenders before striking the ball between two makeshift goalposts. Coach pulled him aside afterward. “You’ve got something,” he said. “Why aren’t you on the team?”
“I shrugged,” he remembers. Santos didn’t think he was the type to wear the kit, let alone represent the school. But the coach encouraged him to come to trials anyway. So he did.
To his surprise, he made the squad.
“The first few weeks were tough,” he says. He barely spoke during training. Team talks left him feeling exposed, especially when he stammered. Some of the boys whispered jokes. Others left him out of group drills. But Coach didn’t push him to be loud. “He just asked me to show up and work hard — and for some reason, I did.”
Then, in the middle of the season, his world wobbled again. Aunt Mercy collapsed at work from exhaustion. The hospital said it was a mixture of stress, overwork, and underlying health issues she’d ignored for too long. She was discharged after a few nights, but everything shifted. Santos suddenly had to cook, clean, make sure she took her medication, and still find time for schoolwork and football.
“Training took a backseat then,” he adds.
Coach Sadiq noticed his absence and asked to speak to him privately. Santos didn’t want to open up, but something cracked. He explained what was going on — the hospital, the bills, the pressure. Coach listened, then gave him time off from the team without judgment.
Santos returned a few weeks later. He felt different. Slower. A bit more tired. “But I was more focused,” he says, “because it helped me stay steady mentally. I needed it to feel even a bit of happiness.”
He wanted to play in the big final. “I practised every single day after school to make sure I’d be in the match — and maybe even score. I needed that, just to let off my pain and feel content, even for a little bit.”
Santos didn’t start, but he sure ended the game with a bang. A 20-yard curler from him made his team victorious.
“Seventy minutes had gone by, and I didn’t think I’d even play. But eventually, the coach said my name — and I made sure I was switched on. I remember getting the ball and just running and running. Then I reached a point where I thought, ‘If I hit it right, it’ll go in’ — and thankfully, it did.
“The feeling was insane. It was like all my problems left when the ball nestled in the net,” he adds.
Now, Santos is 18 and an aspiring footballer. From that moment he fell in love with the sport deeply and wanted to give his life to it. He plays for his local team, St Matthews Project, and is hoping to get scouted for a bigger club.
He’s also started helping out at a local youth programme on weekends, running drills for younger kids. Many of them remind him of himself — quiet, unsure, but quick on their feet.
He still has a stammer. School was stressful for him. His aunt still works long hours. But now, when he steps onto the pitch, he feels confident — and free from it all.