Nonda’s mysterious journey from Mbarara to Champions League final

Shabani Christophe Nonda’s profile shows he is a Congolese born in Burundi. But his official pro-file omits his stopover in Uganda, where he briefly trained with Mbarara United, then in the Super-mini league, the current equivalent to Big League in Ugandan football.

Swaib Raul Kanyike, who hails from Mbarara, recalls Nonda in the late ‘90s as a “promising star with a deadly shot.

"Such was Mbarara’s hope in Nonda that when senior player Phillip ‘Pichu’ Gasana attacked Nonda, who had criticised Gasana for mistreating his spouse, coach Moses Ndawula condemned the senior defender because “this boy is our only future striker.

"By then, Kanyike says, Mbarara had many gifted Congolese forwards like Te-membe, life captain Abdul Senga, Mirambo Kimonto, who seamlessly did step overs before Luis Figo and Denilson popularised them on telly.

“Nonda had a lethal shot and scored plenty of goals in training,” Kanyike, a journalist, recalls. But he could not play ahead of Senga and Temembe.

 He briefly went to Rwanda and months later we heard Shabani was in France. But the timeline somehow omits the events. 

Something does not add up. Bakari Malima, a former Tanzanian footballer, tells a story of being arrested with Nonda on their way to South Africa. 

In South Africa, Nonda played for Vaal Professionals between 1994 and 1995 before joining FC Zürich in Switzer-land in 1996, scoring 36 goals in 75 appearances, and topping the league scoring chats for two successive seasons.

Kanyike wonders: could it be that Nonda stopped by at Mbarara in a season break? But how come no one mentioned his European deal? How come he was below Temembe, Senga in the pecking order? How come he did not have any air of a superstar coming from Europe? Something does not add up. 

Maybe coach Ndawula would have clarified. But his phone was not available by press time. What isn’t in doubt though, is his seven years in French football, where he nearly won the Champions League.

Fitting in Trezeguet boots Nonda signed for Rennes from Zurich on $9m, a season before Juventus paid $13 million for World Cup winner Thierry Henry from Monaco.  In his first season, Nonda scored 15 goals in 32 league matches. 

And in 1999-00, alongside 18-year old El-Hadji Di-ouf, Nonda played two matches fewer than the previous season, but manag-es 16 goals.

 In total, he scored 36 goals in 77 games across competitions – 31 in 62 league matches. Among them was the winning goal in 2-1 home victory against his future employers Monaco. 

And when Trezeguet left the newly crowned French league champions for Juventus, Monaco manager Claude Puel signed Nonda as the best  potential  replacement  for  the French forward, who had been Monaco’s lead striker since striking partner Henry had joined Juventus.

Trezeguet had been the club’s league tops corer with 22 goals – one less than Olympic Lyon’s Sonny Andersonas Monaco claimed the 1999-00 league title.

Such were the lofty heights Nonda was tasked to scale. He scored his and Monaco’s first league goal of the season after just four minutes but the defending champions capitulated 5-2 to eventual champions Nantes,However, that heavy home defeat was a harbinger for a mediocre season. 

Nonda managed 12 goals in 29 matches but Monaco finished a distant 11th in the league, just nine points above the red zone. They also lost the League Cup final 2-1 to Lyon. The side had future Champions League winners John Arne Riise and Eric Abidal but lacked experience on the elite continental level.

 With seven points, Mona-co dropped out of the Champions League, having finished  bottom, in a tight group D that  was  led by  Sturm Graz on 10 points, as Galatasaray edged Rangers with both on eight points.

With Puel gone, former player Didi-er Deschamps took over as manager. In 2001-2002, Nonda played 30 league matches, scoring 14, two more than in his first and was again the club’s top scor-er. 

But even without the burden of European football, Monaco slumped further, finishing 15th in the league. The following season, Monaco added towering Croatian striker Dado Prso to the frontline, forming a terrific duo with Nonda that terrorised defenses before Fernando Morientes intruded. 

Prso scored 12 league goals, Nonda 26 in 35 games, including eight in the last five games. Lyon took the league but many thought that had Prso not missed half the season injured, Monaco would have won it.Nonda was crowned Ligue 1 top scorer, beating the likes of Pedro Pauleta and Didier Drogba.

 The Congolese became the first African to win the trophy since Senegalese Jules Bocandé in the 1985–86 season. Auxerre’s Djibril Cissé would score 26 the following season but having played three more games. 

Actually, 26 goals remained the high-est tally by a Ligue 1 top-scorer un-til Zlatan Ibrahimović netted 30 for PSG in 2012-13.The fairy-tale run. The 2003-04 season had the bad and the good: largely due to injuries, Non-da lost his first team place, and the arrival of Morientes, on loan from Real Madrid, restricted the Congolese to just 12 league games just five goals. 

But Monaco reached the Champions League podium, and Nonda was part of that fairytale run.

After eliminating nine-time champions Real Madrid, in the semi-final, Monaco hosted Claudio Ranieri’s Chelsea, reenergised by Roman Abramivich’s petrodollars. Drama: Prso headed the visitors ahead in 17 minutes. Hernan Crespo levelled five minutes later.

Greek midfielder Akis Zikos was sent off in 53 minutes after an incident with Chelsea’s Claude Makelele. Reduced to 10 men, Monaco had to double their effort if they stood any chance. Morientes restored the host’s lead with a thunderous volley in the 78th minute before Nonda squeezed in the third five minutes later. 

Monaco won 3-1, and after a 2-2 draw in the second leg at the Stam-ford Bridge, the French side had reached their first ever Champions League final.

In final, Monaco had more pedigree than FC Porto per capita: manager Des-champs was the captain of the Marseille side that won the Champions League in 1993; Morientes had won the trophy thrice with Real.

Meanwhile, Porto had won the trophy in 1987, but Jose Mourinho’s men were all first-timers. Also Morientes and Prso were the best strikers in the competition with nine and seven goals respectively, while Porto’s best was South African Benni McCa-rthy with four. 

Still, Deschamps left Prso and Nonda on the bench. Prso replaced the injured Giuly after 23 minutes, and Nonda came in for Frenchman Édouard Cissé on the 64th minute but Monaco lost 3-0, thanks to goals from Carlos Alberto, Deco and Dmitri Alen-ichev, that ended Monaco’s and Nonda’s Cinderella run.

Even with Morientes back to Real, and Prso off to Ranger, Nonda did not recoup his first team place. He played just 10 league games without a goal. 

Instead, Deschamps used for forwards including Emmanuel Adebayor and Javier Saviola who scored a total of 37, just 11 more than Nonda’s 26 in 2002-03. 

With 57 goals in 116 games, Nonda left for Roma in 2005, went on loan to Blackburn Rovers before redeeming himself at Galatasaray, where he won the Turkish Super League in 2008.

Now 43, Nonda is a member of the “Champions for Peace” club, a group of famous elite athletes committed to serving peace in the world through sport.