From Kafue To Leicester – Daka’s Incredible Football Journey

Initially from the shallow valleys of Kafue, Zambia, Patson Daka’s football journey was already an extraordinary tale before he arrived in the United Kingdom.

He was the boy who shouldered the hopes of an entire nation. The youngster who had never seen snow before but swapped searing African heat for a snowstorm in the Eastern Alps to chase his dreams. The man who would lift major trophies in Austrian football, scoring 27 goals in 28 games in a single season. The Zambian icon who became the first Leicester City player to score four goals in a single match for 64 years.

Around a year-and-a-half ago, Patson was sitting in a Linz hotel room, watching the English FA Cup Final between Chelsea and Leicester. On the eve of RB Salzburg’s Austrian Bundesliga clash with LASK, with roommate and childhood friend Enock Mwepu, Patson watched on as Brendan Rodgers’ men hoisted the famous trophy to the heavens under Wembley’s arch.

It was a spine-tingling moment for Foxes fans everywhere – and for the neutrals. It was an occasion which typified Leicester City at its very best – when quality and talent is fused with togetherness and a family spirit spurred them on to greatness. It was an afternoon which left its mark on Patson Daka too.

“It was really an unbelievable moment,” he says, speaking inside the King Power Centre’s dome in Seagrave – the Club’s training headquarters. “It felt just so special. It was way before Leicester even came into contact with me. I remember thinking, the way Leicester play, it’s perfect for my playing style. I thought: ‘I would love one day to play for this club’.”

Patson can remember when ’80 or 90 per cent’ of Zambia’s people were willing City to victory in their historic Premier League title triumph five years earlier. He says he was already a Leicester fan before he joined the Club, enchanted by their fairy-tale rise to the top and their determination to stay there.

Patson was a superstar from a young age in Zambia.

“When my agent told me that Leicester had contacted us, I had nothing to think about,” he recalls. “I was just like: ‘Let’s do it!’ From there, we started having meetings with the gaffer, with everyone, and it was an easy decision for me. I thought this is the team that I wanted to play for.”

Daka instantly endeared himself to the Blue Army with a post on his Instagram which offered an insight into his eagerness to learn more about his new club. It was a picture of the Fearless Foxes book by Jonathan Northcroft, which chronicles City’s Premier League miracle. Because of COVID-19 regulations at the time, the Club’s new striker, though, had to quarantine in another hotel room – this time in the UK – before he could start to fully settle in the East Midlands.

One day, as the countdown to freedom went on, Patson picked up his phone to find a text from none other than Erling Haaland – his former team-mate at RB Salzburg and the man mountain who is currently tearing up the Premier League in frightening fashion. “Erling just sent me a funny message, something about me coming to the UK, where he had been born, and wishing me luck at Leicester City. We laughed about it and, when he was signing for Man City, I texted him, something like: ‘See you the Premier League!’”

Our conversation was taking place just after Haaland – now at Manchester City – had become the first-ever player in Premier League history to score a hat-trick in three successive home games. “He’ll break records and records,” Patson says. “He’s already doing it. He has all the qualities to do whatever he wants to do and to be in life.”

Even a generational talent like Haaland has spoken glowingly about the man who, back in 2021, was about to become Patson’s new team-mate – Jamie Vardy. It’s sometimes easy to forget or underestimate the sheer scale of Vardy’s fame around the world. In every corner of the globe, however remote you venture, if you showed someone a picture of City’s No.9, they’ll probably be able to name him… and tell you their favourite goal he’s scored.

Playing with Vardy was a dream for Daka.

“The way that people see him on TV, it’s very, very different to the way he is in person,” Patson explains. “When you get to know him at a personal level, it’s unbelievable. It’s just a joy to play alongside him, to learn from him and also to just share the dressing room with him. There’s never a dull moment with him. Every time you’re around him, it’s just funny things that are happening!”

Talk of Haaland or Vardy, Austrian titles and FA Cups is a far cry from Patson’s humble beginnings back in Zambia. He says that his childhood was defined by three things – school, church and family. That list would be swelled to include football when his father, Nathtali, returned from work one day with a pair of new football boots.

“I think they were Total 90s,” grins Patson. “I was around seven or eight. That was really mind blowing for me. I remember that day so clearly. It was a special day. It was almost the beginning of everything for me.”

Patson grew up in a town where ‘there was just so much love’ and, even at a young age, he delighted in bringing joy to the people around him through his football.

“I was so excited to see how football brought people together, how much joy it brought to people,” he beams. “I wanted to be part of that. I just wanted to be one of the people that gave other people a reason to be together, to smile and just to forget about everything else that’s going on in their lives and just be happy in that moment.”

Glory in Austria as Daka lifts seven major trophies with RB Salzburg.

You’ll often hear strikers talk whimsically about that feeling they get when the ball bugles the net and the crowd leap to their feet. Daka’s no different. After becoming a goal machine back in Zambia, his name has since featured on a LCFC scoresheet 14 times – 88 across his club career and on another nine occasions for Zambia.

“The crazy thing about scoring, when you start, there’s just that feeling that you get,” City’s No.20 continues. “Every time, when you’re going to play a game, you have that feeling: ‘I’m going to score’. Everyone in the team gets a feeling: ‘If we give him the ball, he’s going to score’. When you score one, you have that feeling: ‘I can score two’, ‘I can score three!’”

Daka enjoyed – and endured – different fortunes across a range of spells and loan moves to the likes of Kafue Celtic, Nchanga Rangers and Power Dynamos in his homeland. His early career presented many hurdles, but each time, Patson was able to leap them.

“It was really tough at times,” he says. “I had seasons where I didn’t score enough goals and nobody wanted me. But because I kept the faith in myself and my belief in God, I carried on. Also, the friends that I have, my family, they know what I’m capable of doing. They were there to encourage me to remind me of who I am, and just to support me.”

After initially only scoring a solitary goal in the first half of the season at Power Dynamos, Daka ended the campaign as top scorer. Things were looking up. Guided by Frédéric Kanouté, who founded the agency 12 Management, Patson moved to Austrian outfit FC Liefering – a club with close ties to RB Salzburg. After impressing on an initial one-week trial, he was invited back to Salzburg. A new adventure was only just beginning.

As Patson explains, he got the call during a tour in Zimbabwe with Zambia’s youth team – a short while after shining at the U17 Africa Cup of Nations: “When I was in camp, I was just in my summer attire, you know, and the coaches said: ‘You have to travel to Austria now!’

“I was there to play a friendly game in Zimbabwe. There was no chance to go home or something like that. I had to fly from Zimbabwe to Austria and I found out it was winter, and it was snowing! I used to hear about snow but I didn’t know anything about it. To experience it, it was really, really crazy for me.

“It was hard to adapt because also I went there very young, I was homesick. I was thinking about my friends, my family, and it is just like: ‘How am I going to manage it?’ At the same time, I realised why I was there. That’s what I wanted, what I always dreamed about. I wanted to play in Europe.”

The Zambian made history by scoring four goals for the Foxes in Moscow.

Patson’s ‘one in a million opportunity’ as he calls it gradually became easier as his talent shone through. His first chance to impress came early on, too, as RB Salzburg’s youth team competed in the U19 UEFA Youth League competition. They’d got to the semi-finals without Daka, but it turns out that they would need him to lift the trophy.

“The good part was I didn’t go there as the main striker because there were already men strikers there,” he adds, reflecting on the earliest days in Salzburg. “For me, it was slow get into the team, to get the experience. I was fortunate enough to join the team in the semi-finals stage! But I wasn’t really like one of the first options.

“I was waiting for the opportunity. When we were playing Barcelona (in the last-four), we were down by a goal to nil and, in the second half, the coach said: ‘Go and do whatever you can! Whatever happens, happens!’ I went there, I took my opportunity, I scored the first goal, and then we scored the second goal. We won 2-1 and we went to the final.

“I was on the bench again in the final and then I was introduced when we were 1-0. I went in, I scored and again we went on to win 2-1 again and we won the Youth League, which was more than I could have wished for. In my career in Europe, it was a really, really good start!”

It’s perhaps telling that, for all Patson’s achieved, the memories he volunteers to talk about often concern his formative years. Moments which may get overlooked by others. He doesn’t – as some may do – underestimate their significance. Indeed, if you ask him for his fondest memory on the international stage with Zambia, he’s eager to stress that he doesn’t believe his greatest moment for the senior Chipolopolo side has come yet.

The man who has lifted eight senior trophies in his career still points to the U20 Africa Cup of Nations as one of the pinnacles of his entire career – ‘The proudest moment of my time for Zambia’.

It’s not always been simple for Daka in a Zambia shirt. He was thrust into becoming a household name at a tender age, in his mid-teenage years, and that expectation was not necessarily helpful. In England, we can point to countless youngsters who have been subjected to the nation’s glare after breaking through – an experience which can make break an aspiring footballer’s career. It was similar for Daka too – but he got through it.

“As a young player, when you’re coming up, everyone is excited,” he says. “[Expectation] was really, really too high for me, I would say. It was like they expected me to carry the team and, at that point, I was only 15 or 16, I think. It was really, really, really tough.

The Kafue-born striker says he is now fully settled in Leicester.

“It was a huge responsibility for me at that point. I’m grateful at the same time that it happened, because it has also played a part in who I am today. I don’t get easily shaken with things that happen because I look back and see I was able to do that and come out of it. I can now stand anything that comes my way.”

It’s safe to say that the Zambian people – who today (24 October) toast their national day of independence – love Patson Daka. You only need to take a fleeting glance at any @LCFC post on social media to find proof of the affection and the respect he commands in his homeland. His stature is so high, even the President of Zambia often sends him messages of congratulations whenever landmarks are achieved – like joining Leicester City in 2021.

It was obvious again in arguably his greatest game in a Foxes shirt too, back in November of last year. Now more familiar snow greeted Daka and his new team-mates in Moscow for a crunch UEFA Europa League group stage tie against Russian giants Spartak. COVID-19 restrictions made it practically impossible for English fans to travel – although some exceptionally determined ones did manage to make the trip.

A modest away following of 25 was bolstered by a contingent of Zambians in the away end at Otkrytie Bank Arena. Students in Moscow, they took full advantage of a rare opportunity to watch a countryman play in an elite fixture on their doorstep in Russia. What transpired – as Daka became the first Leicester player to score four goals in a single fixture since 1958 – was a magical evening both for Daka himself and the away end in Moscow.

“That moment was really special,” he smiles. “We had Leicester people and Zambian people together in that away section. It was a difficult moment for travel and anything, but to just have some fans come, it was more reason for us to give them something to appreciate their efforts. It was crazy, it was cold, and they still made it. It was a special moment, not only for me, but also for the team.”

Back in the present, Patson is now settled in Leicester – professionally and personally. He lives locally with his family and he has three goals to his name already in 2022/23. It’s not been a season even close to the Club’s ambitions yet, but Daka’s unyielding positivity – combined with City’s encouraging recent form – bodes well for the future. Daka is convinced another chapter in his remarkable tale will involve Leicester City climbing the Premier League table.

“For me, in life, it doesn’t really matter how you start,” he stresses. “It’s about how you finish. I remember some difficult years for me when I was younger, but you have to work hard to achieve your dreams. The start to the season hasn’t been good, but I’m looking forward to how we’re going to finish. I believe the next time we sit down, maybe in May, we’ll be telling a very, very different story. It’s going to be a happy ending.”

BySam Stevens|lcfc.com