You Can Only Hope to Contain Him: How Adebayo Akinfenwa Became Soccer's Cult Hero

The dial tone rings in the weird echoey way it does when you call somewhere outside of the United States. Within a few moments, Adebayo Akinfenwa picks up and says he can barely hear you. Not that it matters anyway, because he doesn't know who you are, and he doesn't recognize the number that's popped up on his caller ID. There have been dozens of calls this week, all from people like you, who had never previously heard of a team called AFC Wimbledon, much less known that a striker named Adebayo Akinfenwa even existed. So now he can't keep track of who is on the other end of the phone.

"Oh yeah, from the States," he says after you remind him of the scheduled interview.

He asks if you can call back in 30 minutes. It appears all of the interviews have tapped out his phone's battery. He and his phone need a recharge.

A week ago, Akinfenwa, 32, lived on the fringes of popularity. He had gained a cult following in the United Kingdom for being the strongest player in the FIFA video game franchise (97 strength rating), and was known by hard core fans as the thick-bodied forward--5'10", 225 pounds--in the lower levels of English football with the fun Twitter account. On the field, Akinfenwa is impossible to miss. He resembles a Sherman tank running amongst a slew of Fiats.

Akinfenwa was content with his marginal fame, but then Wimbledon drew Liverpool in the third round of the FA Cup, and the Reds barely managed a 2-1 win on Monday. For stretches, Wimbledon--which plays in League 2, the fourth division of English football--appeared to be the more determined, if not better, team.

"I felt we stifled Liverpool," Akinfenwa says.

In the 36th minute, after a scramble in the box following a Wimbledon corner, Akinfenwa tapped in a loose ball past Liverpool goalkeeper Simon Mignolet to tie the score at 1. For several glorious moments, an upset seemed truly possible, and that "magic of the FA Cup" slogan that everyone drones on about appeared true. There was magic in that big man scoring the biggest goal of his professional career against his favorite boyhood team.

"To score against a team I supported was priceless," Akinfenwa says. "It was a surreal moment. When the game was on, we looked at them like it was just another 11 players. But after the fact, we went back to being fans. There's no way around it. They're the players we aspire to be."

Liverpool--with two goals from Steven Gerrard, one of Akinfenwa's favorite players--ended up winning the match, but all anybody talked about was the curious sight of Akinfenwa running on the field appearing almost twice as big as everyone else. Akinfenwa had a new legion of fans in the United States.

After the match, Akinfenwa--who had made it known last week in his club's locker room that he would put one of his teammates in a headlock or in a bear hug if they attempted to swap jerseys with Gerrard--approached the Liverpool legend and asked for his shirt. Gerrard--in his final season at Liverpool--told Akinfenwa that he was going to keep that game match shirt.

But he added, "Don't worry big man, I've signed one for you." Sure enough, Gerrard sent Akinfenwa a signed shirt.

There's an everyman quality people appreciate in how Akinfenwa stands out because of his size, the way a middle-aged man might appear out of place during a Saturday pick-up soccer game at the park against teenagers. But there's nothing ordinary about him. A devoted gym rat, Akinfenwa can bench press almost twice his bodyweight. He may be big-bodied, but he's also able-bodied. In his English league playing career, Akinfenwa has scored 132 goals in 393 matches. He's no oddity. He's a real player.

"My stats don't lie," he says.

He added about the attention given to his size: "For me now, I embrace it. I think it comes to signify my mantra and my brand. My mindset is that it's OK to be different and unique. As I got older, I learned you can't change perceptions, not just in football but also in life."

And it would be all fine and good if a stout body was all there was to Akinfenwa. There is a place in the sports world for that, a cruel place where people mock someone because of their physical appearance, but it's a place nonetheless. Yet soon you find out that Akinfenwa's size is the least interesting thing about him.

When Akinfenwa was 18 years old he experienced what he now realizes was the defining moment of his life. He had been training with Watford F.C.'s youth team for a spell, and one day he was summoned into the manager's office. Such meetings never end well. This one didn't either.

"We're not going to sign you," the manager told him. "You're not going to make it. You're not focused enough."

Akinfenwa was stunned. Mostly he was angry.

"I remember leaving and thinking, 'You're not going to be right,'" he recalls.

Looking back on it now, Akinfenwa realizes that the manager was right. He wasn't focused. Often, he spent too much time hanging out with his friends when he should have been training.

Akinfenwa was born in East London to parents of Nigerian heritage who provided him and his two brothers with a strict upbringing. His mother inspired him to be a devout Christian. But neither religion nor strict parenting were enough to keep Akinfenwa away from some of the temptations of his crime-stricken neighborhood. Trouble was everywhere. Pick the wrong group of friends and you could eventually end up in jail for theft or even worse offenses. And that's where Akinfenwa was headed: toward a sad, but familiar ending, despite the fact that he seemed to be a standout soccer player.

Coaches already seemingly had it in for him because of his large size. His lack of focus only gave them another reason to disregard him.

Without any other options, Akinfenwa's agent found him a two-week trial with a Lithuanian team that came about only because the agent's wife was from Lithuania.

Seemingly, Akinfenwa had gotten the wake-up call that he needed. He concluded his two-week trial and was offered a three-year contract, which his agent shopped around to English teams to see if he could drum up interest because Akinfenwa really didn't want to go to Lithuania. Yet after two months, nobody was interested. Lithuania was the only option.

So there he went to play for FK Atlantas. He knew nothing about the country and had no idea what to expect. Only after he arrived in Lithuania did he learn that no black player had ever played in the league.

During the first preseason practice, a group of the team's fans watched from the stands. When Akinfenwa entered the field, they yelled, "Zigga Zigga Zigga, let's shoot that fucking Nigger."

Very quickly, Akinfenwa realized that life in Lithuania was going to be grim. He had never experienced this type of racism in England.

"If I had known that would happen I wouldn't have put myself through it," he says. "But I wasn't going to let anyone run me out of there."

Perhaps only someone like Akinfenwa, who had been hearing insults all his life about his size, could have used that incident to inspire himself to focus on football. But that's what he did. His life consisted of going to the stadium to train and then going straight back to his apartment. He was no longer tempted to hang out with the wrong crowd because there was no crowd to hang out with.

Occasionally, Akinfenwa would go to the movies, but even that was awkward because he was only one of a few black people in the city of Klaipeda. Even banal, everyday tasks could be difficult.

One time while grocery shopping, a young pre-teen girl ran up to him and yelled, "White Power!"

Akinfenwa didn't know how to react. He was speechless.

"I thought it was a practical joke," he says. "In London, with my size, people weren't going to disrespect me."

In Lithuania, Akinfenwa had found the one place where his size didn't matter. Only his skin color did.

Gradually, Akinfenwa gained acceptance, but only because he performed well on the field. He helped take Atlantas to the UEFA Cup--now named the Europa League--and he scored the lone goal in the team's 1-0 win in the 2001 finals of the Lithuanian Cup.

After that, Akinfenwa became a local celebrity. He hardly ever had to pay for a meal or a drink when he went out.

But he doesn't look back on it now and think that he somehow changed racial attitudes.

"I didn't change," he says. "My skin color didn't change. People accepted me because I helped them win silverware. If I didn't score goals, they would have kept their mind set. If I'm honest, I'm proud of myself that I didn't let anyone run me out. If anything, I looked at it like if I could deal with that, then I can deal with anything."

If he had to do it over again, he probably would not have gone to Lithuania, and he certainly would have had the courage to call people out on their racism. But as an 18 year old, he had yet to discover who he was, both on and off the field.

Yet looking back on it now, Akinfenwa acknowledges it was a period that saved his career, and perhaps his life--especially if the alternative was going back to the streets of East London where many of his childhood friends had ended up either dead or in jail.

"That was an integral part of my story as a footballer," he says.

Akinfenwa returned to England after two seasons in Lithuania. Since then he's carved out a successful professional career. He's played for 11 different teams since 2003, although he argues against being called a journeyman because some of those early team appearances came during trials when he was trying to establish himself in England.

Most of his managers have accepted Akinfenwa for who he is--a strong, back to the goal striker, who is good in the air and can hold up play to let his teammates join the attack--instead of dismissing him for what he's not; a swift forward who stretches out defenses. There are advantages to having a player with his size and skills.

For a while, even Akinfenwa wasn't sure there was much value in a player with his abilities. When he played the FIFA video game he'd avoid playing as himself because he was too slow. But nowadays he regularly uses his video game doppelganger.

"They gave me a little more pace now," he jokes. "I put the word to FIFA that I wasn't happy."

(Akinfenwa's speed rating increased from 53 in FIFA 14 to 54 in FIFA 15.)

Now nearing the end of his career, Akinfenwa has grand plans for his post-football life. He has turned the long-running joke about his size into a brand named Beast Mode On, which produces a clothing line, and is also a record label. BMO is not just a brand, he says, but also a way of life.

Later this year, he plans to open a BMO soccer academy for children.

Yes, the focus will be on field training, but it will also incorporate a bit of motivational speaking to help players with the mental aspect of the game.

"You come in all shapes and sizes in life," he says he will tell the children. "As long as your devotion is up there, you can make it."

His academy will be inclusive. He will accept tall kids and short ones; white skinned and dark skinned ones; thin players and, of course, the stout ones too, because there is a place in the sports world for all of them.