Emile Baron’s remarkable story has the chance to go one of two Hollywood endings after fans in Norway raised R2m to try to get him and his family back on their feet — feel-good happy and inspirational, or gritty art-house downer.
That seems the tough summary of the situation for the former Bafana Bafana, Kaizer Chiefs and Bidvest Wits goalkeeper whose life, since a broken leg ended his career a decade ago, has apparently been varying degrees of a decline into a personal hell. A hell made worse by the knowledge he has not been able to spare wife Sheri and his 14 and nine-year-old sons protection from such circumstances.
There was a lot to be celebrated in a long career where Baron earned six Bafana Bafana caps rivalling some of the best goalkeepers of the time, from Andre Arendse to Itumeleng Khune, from signing a professional contract at 16 for Hellenic.
He was on top of the world playing in goal for Shakes Mashaba’s star-studded South Africa Under-23s, including Cape friends Benni McCarthy and Quinton Fortune, who shocked a Brazil containing Ronaldinho 3-1 at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Just more than a year earlier, Lillestrøm, on a training camp in South Africa, needed a stand-in goalkeeper after an injury, and 19-year-old Baron impressed enough to be signed. In five-and-a half years at the club, Baron won admirers, friends and popularity for his athletic performances that won him Tippeligaen (now Eliteserien) goalkeeper of the year in his second season.
He also started to attract headlines of the wrong sort for his nightclubbing exploits. In one of the reports on Norwegian website TV2 last month on his slide to poverty, which had the reaction of a fundraising drive in that country, Baron, now 43, said: “There were several of us who liked to go to town. But you know, some get caught, others get away. Some manage to be discreet, others are visible to everyone.”
German teammate Uwe Rösler’s injury and gravitation to becoming the club’s disciplinarian coach, and the fact Baron was not earning as much as many might have thought in Norway, led to a move home to Chiefs.
He was injured in his first training at Naturena and out for the 2004-05 season, but enjoyed four more years competing with Rowen Fernadez and Khune for some games in the gold No.1 jersey, earning his best salary of R70,000 a month, he said later. He won a league title, playing 21 games, with Gavin Hunt’s imperious SuperSport United in 2009-10. Baron was in Carlos Parreira’s Bafana squad that camped in Brazil ahead of the 2010 World Cup, before injury ruled him out of the main event.
At Wits, at 34, in a 1-0 defeat against Orlando Pirates at Mbombela Stadium on April 27 2013, it all came crashing down as Baron broke his leg horrifically in a clash with Ndumiso Mabena. In a 2020 interview with the online video channel of freelance journalist Matshelane Mamabolo, Shoot Online, Baron said: “When I landed I fell to the ground and looked at my leg and my ankle was right next to my knee, and I just pushed it back into position. And I knew it was over.”
The injury created “a long battle” that resulted in the Baron family’s descent into poverty.
The goalkeeper told Shoot Online Wits’ management “were telling me I was supposed to receive a lump sum of R4m” in an insurance payout from the Premier Soccer League (PSL).
The matter dragged on, as the insurance company said there was “some chance I might play again”.
“Then the insurance came back and said the lump sum was going to be halved because I was over 30. It was 2015 and I was still going to Wits every week to find out what was happening. I went to tell them, ‘I have a huge problem, my house is going to be auctioned because I’m in arrears for R200,000 on my bond.’
“They said they’d see what they could do. Two days later they said come to the office we’ve got an offer from the insurance. The offer was exactly R200,000. It was very fishy.”
Baron said he got no more. The payout saved his house for a time — but he sold it in 2019 having had almost no income in seven years, during which time his lack of qualifications and an infection to his leg injury he could not afford to resolve mostly prevented him from finding work. He tried the legal route, but lawyers told him it had been “longer than three years now and there’s nothing we can do about it”.
In the Shoot interview Baron avoids pointing to the trappings of stardom for players from tough backgrounds and admits his mistakes.
“If I knew then [earning well at Chiefs] what I know now I would have done things differently. But I was still single at that time, there were a lot of things you didn’t think about."
“I never thought I’d break my leg and have no income — a goalkeeper can play until 40. I invested in the wrong things — I would buy furniture and things like that for cash, but my house and car were in instalments.
“If I knew then, I would have bought the house for cash. Status is the thing that brings you down. You should concentrate on the less glamourous things like investments and your schooling.”
So we’re working with him on a plan on how we’re going to use those funds. We’re just assisting to make sure the money is channelled and managed in the right way, obviously in discussion with Emile and his family.
— Former PSL competitions manager, Kabelo Bosilong
He said he approached some of his previous clubs for help as his situation declined. “I don’t know if they were just too busy, but I didn’t get a response. I think also it could have been from my side because of me isolating myself from the football world [amid his anger at his injury and situation].”
After some interviews in 2019 and 2020, Baron dropped off the radar, and apparently things got worse, until the TV2 reports and their reaction in Norway, which TimesLIVE Premium has now reported on in South Africa.
Remarkably, Sheri never left him but Baron relied on a monthly state grant of about R900 towards his sons, collecting bottles and handouts for survival, the family living in a one-bedroom house in a tough neighbourhood in Johannesburg South. The former player said he tried to take his own life four times. His older son dropped out of school.
For an existence so precarious, how the disbursement of the R2m raised in a drive led by Lillestrøm and their supporters club, Kanari-Fansen, is managed seems crucial.
Kabelo Bosilong, a former PSL competitions manager, has been roped in to negotiate how that happens with the Norwegian CEO of the PSL between 2007 and 2010, Kjetil Siem,
“Yes, we’re working with Emile. Obviously it’s a [delicate] situation. We just wanted to make sure it goes to the right place and in the right way,” Bosilong said.
“That’s what we’re discussing with him and his family because obviously we don’t want it to be irresponsibly managed because it’s a kind gesture from those guys [in Norway].
“We’re just assisting to make sure the money is channeled and managed in the right way, obviously in discussion with Emile and his family.”
Lillestrøm communications head Morten Stokstad said a responsible payment scheme is being planned.
“With great help from Kjetil Siem we have had two meetings with Kabelo Bosilong, who will help us with the whole process. Both Kanari-Fansen and Lillestrøm are very focused on making sure the money will help Emile Baron and his family with a better life in the long run.
“We want it to last for as many years as possible. Bosilong has been very helpful and will help us with a good set-up for Emile, without taking any money for the job. The most important thing, of course, is to get an apartment for the Baron family.
“The club would also like to invite Emile and his family to a Lillestrøm match later this year so we can sit down with him and have a good talk about this amazing help from so many people here in Norway.”
Stokstad said of the reaction in Norway: “It’s absolutely amazing. You get touched seeing how many people really want to help a player who had a big place in many Lillestrøm supporters’ hearts. But also people from rival clubs have given money, and that says a lot about the strength and the power of a united football family.”
For Baron, that popularity in a wealthy European country can be a lifeline. Many South African footballers who have fallen into similar circumstances, who did not play abroad, will not have the same second opportunity.
Football already once rescued Baron from a tough upbringing in impoverished Ocean View, near Kommetjie, in Cape Town. He told the Kaizer Chiefs website in 2005: “When I started out with Hellenic it used to take me two hours to get from my home in Ocean View to training at Green Point Stadium, and I used to return home after 11pm almost every day.
“From Ocean view I used to take a taxi to a certain point and then another one to Fishhoek — from there I boarded a train to Cape Town Central and from there it was another taxi to Greenpoint Stadium.
“In life there comes a time when you have to help those who helped you and my parents made sure I could succeed.”
Now football has given Baron a second chance. South Africans who took pleasure from his career will root for him to use it well.
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