Some players, including plenty of the world’s very best, are enigmas, reserving part of their personality for themselves, with a different face in front of the bright spotlights and ever-present cameras.
Others are an open book, wearing their emotions on a sleeve, their life experiences brandished to the world like the crest on their chest.
Watch Kévin Denkey score one of his range of increasingly routine golazos for FC Cincinnati – he’s bagged five in their last six matches, a couple of them promising early contenders for AT&T MLS Goal of the Year, so you have plenty to pick from – and you’ll see the latter: a top talent who knows it, and wants everyone else to follow suit.
“I did good in Belgium. I want to do the same, even more what I did there,” Denkey, the top scorer in the Belgian top flight last season with 27 goals, told MLSsoccer.com in a one-on-one conversation during Cincy’s preseason camp in Clearwater Beach, Florida. “I want to score very, very many goals and to help the team.
“I will do my job, that’s for sure. But I think if the team follows me in my journey and everything I'm doing, we will be very great. Everybody is very serious, working hard, pushing the limit. Everybody will be great.”
Gifted goalscorer
With eight goals in his first 13 MLS matches, a phase in which he’s still been honing his chemistry with fellow newcomer Evander, both he and his team have lived up to his word. And with most of those tallies spectacular, clutch or both – his bicycle-kick winner vs. Sporting KC in late April most prominent among them – the striker has already confirmed the marquee status that his then-MLS-record $16.2 million winter transfer from Cercle Brugge suggested.
It’s propelled Cincy into a share of first place in both the Supporters’ Shield and Eastern Conference standings as they visit the gleaming stage of Mercedes-Benz Stadium for a Sunday Night Soccer presented by Continental Tire clash with Atlanta United (7 pm ET | MLS Season Pass, Apple TV+) on Matchday 15.
“There are not many words to describe what he did,” FCC head coach Pat Noonan said after Denkey’s jaw-dropping bike, which he and the club celebrated by gifting 150 real, actual bicycles to students at an area middle school for perfect or near-perfect attendance and/or honor roll performance.
“It was one of the best goals I’ve seen in person, certainly.”
Noonan may actually take more encouragement from Denkey’s less spectacular finishes. Like the early back-post tap-in of an Evander overhead kick that pushed the Knifey Lions in front of their Hell is Real rivals, the Columbus Crew last Saturday, paving the way to a hard-earned 1-1 draw in hostile territory and underlining the 24-year-old’s instincts and opportunism.
Street baller
Both types of goals, as well as the wider toolkit he flashes every time out, can be traced to Denkey’s distant childhood in Togo, one of Africa’s smallest nations and among its poorest, according to the United Nations Human Development Index. The street soccer of his youth, simultaneously swaggy and hardscrabble, laid his foundation.
“To play in the street is different,” Denkey recalled. “Sometimes when people come, if you dribble someone and he's not happy, you know, don't care. There's no referees; you can learn faster. And sometimes it's small spaces. You play within small spaces, and you need to know how to protect the ball. And this now today, it’s helped me a lot, but I learned it there.
“This, you cannot learn it like this playing here,” he explained, waving at the well-heeled American hotel lobby in which he was sitting, “because it's not the thing. But in the street, I think, is the most – how to play with your teammates also, because when it's too tight, you cannot always keep the ball and go, go, go. You have to one-two with your teammate, to know how to be smart … You need to move the ball quick, and move also yourself, if you want the ball, to touch the maximum.”
You could even say he’s been a professional since he was grade-school age. Because even under highly austere economic circumstances, there was often money on the line in the pickup games of Lomé, Togo's capital city.
“Sometimes everybody puts money,” Denkey recounted with a sly grin. “What you have, you can give, and then make one team; we have this money, other team, they make their own money. We can have three, four teams and make tournament – and then play for our lives.
“It's crazy, we played like this every time.”
Occasionally, accuracy would be tested with shooting competitions on a tiny improvised goal, maybe only two ball widths wide. When Denkey flashes composure under duress on the pitch, it’s a legacy of those days.
“You just take a small goal like this, for one ball here, and we have to reach the goal, with money. So you put your money, everybody bring this money,” he explained. “If you are like, five, three people miss, and two score. So the final is between two. Who will take all the money, man? This also, at the end, it helps for precision.
“You want to win, you don’t want to lose your money! I won money like this a lot of time, and I lose also, because sometimes there is not about precision; sometimes there is pressure.”
Leap of faith
Denkey’s raw materials would later be shaped and guided in a drastically different environment.
He emigrated to France on his own at age 12 in pursuit of a better life, leaving his parents in Togo to join extended family in faraway Europe. Though he dreamed of a footballing career, so do many thousands of others like him on those shores. An uncle who hosted him upon arrival in Paris was blunt about how steeply the odds were stacked against him.
I told him, I want to play soccer. He said, this is impossible,” Denkey recalled. “They were honest with me. Like, even my parents, they didn't believe that I can play soccer.
“My uncle was my family that was here, he say, you can’t. I said I want, and I will.”
He started at a small local club in Lyon, where he’d settled with an aunt, scraping together a 50-Euro registration fee for the chance to play. Soon he caught the eye of scouts from nearby Olympique Lyonnais. He got his big break further south, however, catching on with the academy program at Nîmes.
Again he left loved ones behind, this time for a dormitory, where he was often the only kid in his hall who couldn’t go home to visit family on holidays and off days. He suffered from crippling bouts of loneliness. In retrospect, it may have been a blessing in disguise.
“I was alone. I just stayed there. They left food to me, and I can just put in the micron [microwave] and eat,” said Denkey. “I have all the [training] center for me; I go run, take a ball, play. That's my time – I learned how to improve, how to be good.
“I started doing cones, like, playing with the ball when I'm alone, train every time. There was a beach not far from the center, so I go also on the beach, play on the beach. This all helped me.”
Beyond the thousands of hours of technical work, a driven, resilient psychological base was taking shape, including the realization that he needed to master the rollercoaster ride of emotions from one performance to the next.
Career breakout
By age 20, he’d earned a transfer to Brugges, where he would make his name in earnest.
“Yes, I needed also, I think, maturity: to relax, to be calm,” he said. “I was very, very hungry at the start, as I did it alone. No one was there – while now, everybody's there. It’s true! But you need to come and understand that it's OK, it's life. This is my way. And I want to eat. I'm not doing it for someone, so I have to keep it, and sometimes, showcase. You can't do everything alone.
“It’s not talent. It's not,” he added. “I will not say talent. I will not say chance. I will say it’s the mentality. It starts with the mentality, because talent, I saw a lot of talent since I’ve been playing.”
A key milestone: While still a junior at Nîmes, he earned a call from the Togolese federation for a national team camp. It marked his first trip back to his homeland, the federation paying for the long flight that he’d thus far been unable to afford, with the gift of a reunion with his parents, who were gobsmacked their son had matured into a footballer of that caliber.
“When I went to France, I didn't have the possibility to come back, because you need to pay the ticket and it’s a lot of money,” he explained. “But I came back [for] the first time in Togo since I left after six years, at 18, because the national team of Togo called me for the first time, the first team, the team A.
“To play for national team is like you’re president of the country. And my parents saw this, I came back like this … this was crazy.”
It was then that he crossed paths with Emmanuel Adebayor, the Togolese legend who starred for Arsenal, Manchester City and a litany of other prominent European clubs. The gangly, charismatic striker took a shine to Denkey – they still keep in touch, and occasionally play street soccer in Lomé – and provided mentorship, advice, and a priceless boost of belief.
“He's a big inspiration for me … He come talk to me, like, what's your ambition?” recounted Denkey. “And then he say, ‘if you are serious, you will get there. But when you will succeed, there will be a lot of people around you, a lot of things that can just take from you – I made a lot of mistakes. As I start having money, I start doing crazy things,’ and he talked to me.
“For him, maybe – no, he can't realize what that changed for me. But I always tell him that, ever since the day, I say, ‘bro, you cannot imagine. You cannot imagine, because for you, it's normal. But for me, the way you talk to me, the deep conversation, we stay like this, we talk,’ you know? I always ask questions, and he always writes to me.”
All for Cincy
Denkey’s elder countryman has even expressed interest in visiting North America to watch one of his FCC games in person. With Denkey currently in a four-way tie for third in the MLS Golden Boot presented by Audi race, and the Orange & Blue looking like trophy contenders despite being well short of their ceiling in the eyes of Noonan as well as many MLS pundits, Adebayor might just catch some fireworks if he makes it across the Atlantic later this year.
Cincy’s new spearhead has embraced the expectations that accompany that big price tag and the club’s ambitions.
“I wanted the next level, and I was ready. I knew that my next move will be big,” Denkey said. “So I was ready for this, for the pressure. Because a big club is more intense, you need to do more. So I want it, because I want to continue to grow. I think I want to see what is my limit. I have more in my stomach to give.
“So it’s good, and here, I think is nice,” he added. “The club is nice with me; also, they want to win. This is all I need.”
