Rüdiger Names Victor Moses in ‘Game-Changing’ 5-a-Side of Players Who Overcame Tragedy

Real Madrid and Germany defender Antonio Rüdiger has placed former Chelsea teammate Victor Moses among five footballers he believes exemplify resilience in the face of extraordinary hardship, selecting the Nigerian international in his ‘Game-Changing 5-a-Side’ — a squad composed exclusively of players whose paths to professional football were shaped by tragedy and displacement.

Moses’s inclusion centres on one of football’s most harrowing personal histories. In November 2002, when the winger was just 11 years old, his parents — Austine and Josephine, a Christian pastor and his wife — were killed during the religiously motivated Miss World riots in Kaduna, Nigeria. The violence claimed the lives of an estimated 250 people. Moses spent a week in hiding with an uncle before fleeing to the United Kingdom as a child asylum seeker, where he was placed with foster parents in South London. Rüdiger described the story as “really sad.”

Rather than succumbing to those circumstances, Moses channelled his experience into football, progressing through local amateur football in south London before earning a professional contract with Crystal Palace. His career ultimately brought him to Stamford Bridge, where he accumulated a significant trophy haul that included the 2016/17 Premier League title, the 2017/18 FA Cup, and two UEFA Europa League winners’ medals. At international level, Moses was part of the Nigeria squad that won the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations.

Rüdiger’s selection of Moses reflects a personal understanding of displacement. The defender’s own parents, Matthias and Lily, fled Sierra Leone during the civil war in 1991 and settled in Neukölln, a historically disadvantaged district in Berlin, where Rüdiger grew up navigating poverty before breaking into professional football.

That shared experience of survival is evident throughout the rest of his chosen lineup. In goal, Rüdiger selected Asmir Begović, the former Chelsea and Bournemouth goalkeeper who fled the Bosnian civil war as a child, relocating first to Germany and then to Canada, before going on to represent Bosnia and Herzegovina at the 2014 FIFA World Cup.

The defensive unit features two players born in refugee camps. Alphonso Davies, now a key figure at Bayern Munich and with Canada’s national team, was born in a camp in Ghana after his parents fled the Second Liberian Civil War. Eduardo Camavinga, Rüdiger’s club teammate at Real Madrid, was born in a refugee camp in Cabinda, Angola, to Congolese parents who subsequently sought asylum in France. Camavinga has since become a Champions League winner and a fixture in the French national team setup.

Completing the squad is Iraqi international forward Ali Al-Hamadi, who left Iraq as a one-year-old toddler and grew up in the United Kingdom. Rüdiger singled out Al-Hamadi for particular praise following the striker’s contributions in helping Iraq secure qualification for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, describing his recent performances as heroic.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, represents a landmark tournament for several of the nations represented in Rüdiger’s lineup, with both Iraq and Canada among the sides set to feature on the global stage. For Moses, now in the latter stages of his career, his journey from Kaduna to Stamford Bridge and international football with Nigeria remains one of the sport’s most remarkable stories of perseverance.