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For Jayden Adams, the South Africa midfielder who died this month at the age of 25, football was a “safe space”. Those words, used by Adams’s junior coach Steve Barker at his memorial service last Thursday, tell you everything you need to know about his life beyond the pitch.
Adams’s battles were bestowed on him almost from birth. Though he was born into newly democratic South Africa, by the early 2000s the revolution was well on its way to being betrayed. The vote was extended to all, but few could make full use of the freedoms available to them because socioeconomic circumstances in the country had barely changed. Stellenbosch, where the Adams family were based, is a perfect example.
Its facade is a tourist dream: a university town nestled among vineyards, Cape Dutch architecture and indie boutiques. Most visitors never venture beyond the town centre or into its suburbs, which are home to the far less privileged and are havens of neglect. Those areas are classic Apartheid hangovers, where the wealth has been preserved for a historically advantaged elite and those on the margins, working-class communities of people of colour, are all but invisible.
Ironically, that is how Adams is most often described. He moved in the shadows, both of society and the sport in which he excelled. “Jayden was a guy of very few words. He was quiet, very shy and the smallest among his teammates,” Brendine Johnson, an Adams family spokesperson, says. “Initially, a lot of people missed his football qualities because of his size, but he had a very good fighting spirit. It just wasn’t always on display.”
Adams, whose funeral took place on Saturday in Cape Town, loved the game dearly and his aunt Monica Thaoge recalled how, as a child, he would kick anything round – “even onions” she said at his memorial. His parents, Juanito and Candice, previously mentioned potatoes as their son’s football of choice. Nobody in the family talks about lacking in financial means because theirs was a community striving to make life better. But there were absences, especially early on.
“Everybody in areas like that is just trying to make ends meet,” says Roger Telemachus, the former South Africa cricketer who grew up on the same street as Adams’s father in Cloetesville. “For the kids, they may not have noticed so much because they were occupied, mostly with playing sport. Some fathers, like Juanito, really encouraged their kids and everyone used to play everything on the street: tennis, football, rugby, cricket. It was also the best way of staying out of trouble.”
Problems were there for everyone to see and, according to Telemachus, have got worse “in the last 20 years”. They include gangsterism, substance abuse and crimes that range from petty to serious. Adams was able to escape from that life when he moved to the slightly more affluent area of Ida’s Valley, but still he did not have a life of luxury. For a period, the family of six, which included four children, lived in a two-bedroom place. At other times, they were with his maternal grandmother, Marianna. “He basically grew up in her yard,” says Johnson.
Things started to change for Adams when he was picked for the Stellenbosch Academy Under-18 side at the age of 15. “The environment was tough, especially if you are not big or tall enough, but when physicality was no longer the most important thing, people saw that Jayden was technically very good,” says Johnson.
His coaches agree. Barker, the nephew of South Africa’s Afcon winning coach, Clive, and the current coach of Simba in Tanzania, gave an emotional assessment of Adams’s skills shortly after his death. “You get many good footballers but you get few great footballers. Jayden was great,” he told Newzroom Afrika.
“Jayden had three attributes that set him apart: an incredible first touch, his weight of pass – I’ve never seen anything like it – and he loved the game so much. Being on the pitch was his happy place. He didn’t pass the ball, he used to caress the ball. He was special and his football intelligence was just outstanding.”
It was under Barker that Adams blossomed. He became the first player from the Stellenbosch Academy to play in South Africa’s top flight, the Premier Soccer League. Five years and an international call up later, the country’s richest club, Mamelodi Sundowns, came calling. This year, at the start of his second season with them, Adams shaved his head, in what he joked was a sign of maturity and called himself a “grootman” (big man). The nickname stuck.
Adams never said it, but he may also have realised how much he had grown up. By then, he had been picked, played for and dropped from the national side after arriving late at a training camp and irking the head coach, Hugo Broos. He had also lost two of his academy teammates, including a close friend.
In February 2023, Oshwin Andries, who was 19, died from stabbing injuries he sustained in Paarl, which is 16km north of Stellenbosch. Three years later, Jeandre Gaffoor, 20, drowned in the Krom River.
When Sundowns won the CAF Champions League in May, Adams dedicated his medal to Andries. To lose so much has weighed on the town, but through Adams they have had reason to celebrate.
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His role in Sundowns’ continental victory and a call-up to the World Cup squad suggested Adams’s career trajectory was rising. After a first season at Sundowns where he was often playing off the bench and his place in the side was questioned, he had become integral to the team. At Adams’s memorial, the Sundowns senior coach, Steve Komphela, called him “the heart of our team and the heartbeat of our playing style” who “understood the game like a coach and played it as a player”.
In the past year, Adams was playing to the potential people who knew him well had seen years ago and surprising others with his courage and drive to succeed. South Africa’s captain, Ronwen Williams, recalled an incident at this year’s Africa Cup of Nations when the tiny Adams took on a tall Mali opponent with some choice local words. Williams asked Adams if he knew the size of the player he was sledging, but Adams shrugged it off and replied that the Malian wouldn’t understand anyway.
“That was the character he had,” Williams said at the memorial, smiling through his tears as he bade farewell to the teammate he called “my ma se kind” (my mother’s child, a term of endearment used in South Africa).
As his star rose, Adams was careful not to advertise his achievements. “Jayden knew what he had, but he never wanted to voice it. He was very competitive, but he would never brag,” says Johnson. “You get people who are very good verbally on social media. Jayden was not like that. And he wanted to give back. After every game, he would be giving away shirts and boots to kids who asked.”
He also concentrated on providing for his family because he “always promised them he would change their financial situation”.
At the World Cup, Adams played for them, even through immense pain. His grandmother Marianna died the day before South Africa’s match against Czechia and Adams opted to remain with the squad. He played that match and appeared in good spirits afterwards and called the 1-1 draw positive, even if he was feeling the opposite way.
He also played the next game against South Korea, which South Africa won to reach the knockouts for the first time. Post-game footage showed him sitting on his own while the rest of the squad celebrated with a signature song and dance.
At the memorial, Komphela offered the Adams family a Bible verse as a comfort, but it may as well be a summary. Psalm 23:4: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.”
They will know Adams took that walk many times over his short life and he did not fear. He leaves behind his parents, three siblings, a partner, two children and a community who have gone through what no neighbourhood should. In all that, he has gone from not wanting to be known to spending a week in the footballing world’s spotlight. A minute’s silence was observed at several World Cup games in Adams’s memory. That is not the way his family would have pictured him coming to global attention, but it has shown them that, in football, he was always far more valued than anyone thought.
“I don’t think the community knew how big he was and how people enjoyed his football,” says Johnson. “It’s a huge shock.”
