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LUJ Students Play Soccer with NBA All-Star Victor Wembanyama
In early July, Mahamed Abdelrahim, 22, a student at Lakeland University Japan, organized an event on a platform called Meetup. He was inviting any and all soccer players to join him for an 11-11 exhibition match, which he would referee.
Abdelrahim had scheduled these types of events before. But for this event, as he started to see sign-up names trickle in, he noticed a name he hadn’t seen before: “Victor W.” Not knowing the signee’s identity, he also noticed that Victor W. had added two guests. To Abdelrahim, the more the merrier. Perhaps ‘Victor’ was simply passing through Japan and wanted to get in a workout: “I’ve had a lot of tourists sign up to play football pickup sessions in Tokyo,” he adds.
On July 9, Abdelrahim, whose friends call him “Maha,” got to the pitch early and started counting the players who showed up. While kicking the ball around, he had his back turned when his friend said, “Maha, look behind ya.”
As he turned, he saw perhaps the tallest man he’d ever seen in person. Abdelrahim didn’t register who it was at first, thinking “this really tall buzz cut guy” was just another player. But a closer look revealed that, yes, it was Victor Wembanyama, 21. He’d arrived with his brother and sister, the two guests. They’d been traveling throughout Asia during the summer months, and now here he was, ready to show off his soccer skills.
Of course, Abdelrahim “did not see that coming,” but tried to keep his composure. “Feel free to warm up,” he told Wembanyama, who started stretching.
Almost immediately, Maha’s friends—all basketball fans—knew who he was. “Everyone got hyped as soon as he stepped onto the pitch,” Abdelrahim recalled. “I separated the teams and put him with his brother and sister.”
Once the match started, Wembanyama was “competitive and friendly,” and also “so chill and joking with everyone.” Abdelrahim also recalls Wembanyama in jest “complaining over my decisions while refereeing and making fun of some of the other players over the obvious height difference.”
Turns out, Wembanyama is really good at soccer. “He started as a striker, but he then went to be a goalkeeper.” Abdelrahim was impressed. “It was the best keeper performance I’d seen since I started doing these pickup sessions. His reactions were fast, and it was incredible how he stretched to reach and protect the goal.”
One moment that went viral was a goal he scored after Abdelrahim called an outside-the-box foul on the other team. Wembanyama lined up the kick and bent it like Beckham. “I could not believe my eyes.” The ball whizzed by the goalkeeper, and the basketball player opened his arms wide in triumph.
To Abdelrahim, the pick-up match was its own triumph—a memory that will last for quite some time.
Need proof that Wembanyama enjoyed the moment as well? It's on Instagram, with well over 1.2 million views.
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