In Joseph O’Neill’s Godwin , readers are thrown into the shady business of youth African football recruitment. The novel recounts the same types of dealings that propelled players like Eusébio to the game’s pinnacle. For decades, colonial connections, migration, and European recruitment networks have carried African talent across continents. He is feckless and his sole objective is to sniff out undiscovered football talent with the help of Lefebvre, an experienced, semi-retired French scout. At the event at GWU this past May, O’Neill underscored to students the “distinctly neocolonial dimension to this business of finding raw African talent.”