ABOUT MOHAMED BUYA TURAY
Born 10 January 1995, Mohamed Buya Turay is a 26-year-old Sierra Leonean professional footballer who currently plays in the Chinese Super League as a center-forward for Henan Songshan Longmen. He has made six appearances for the Sierra Leone national team, Leone Stars.
Like most Sierra Leonean kids, Buya started his footballing career on the streets of Freetown where he was reportedly spotted by the local club, FC Mattia. Turay would later start attracting interests from clubs in Guinea and Nigeria which subsequently led to his first trials in Europe. Unfortunately, the trials were unsuccessful as he could not impress the management at the Swedish tier-3 club Vasalunds IF. They thought “he was not good enough”
But Buya kept pushing until he was signed in 2014 by Juventus IF, a tier-5 Swedish club that later merged into IFK Stoocksunds in 2016. Since then Buya has steadily risen through the ranks. Between 2014 and 2018, he played for four different clubs, mostly in the Swedish tier-2 league. His real first major international breakthrough came in 2018 when he was signed by Belgian Jupiler Pro League side Sint-Truiden. The deal was reportedly worth €1.80m. He was loaned to Djurgarden FC in 2019 before finally been sold to Chinese Super League side HB FC in 2020. He left HB FC in April 2021 to join his current side HN S. Longmen in a two-year deal that cost around €1.50m.
Back home, Turay is considered a hero, perhaps not really because of his footballing exploits, but for his big heart out of the field. Heis widely known and loved for his humanitarian strides in support of youths and children.
His generosity and philanthropy received national attention when, in 2020, he offered to cover the medical bills of a child who needed urgent surgery overseas. He later paid $6,000 for emergency eye surgery for a young social media commentator who faced a real risk of losing his vision. When the government of Sierra Leone offered land and cash incentives to the Leone Stars team for a historic qualification to the African Cup of Nations, Turay quickly announced on social media that he would use his own share of the presidential gift to build a shelter for homeless people. He wrote in Krio “Me money way me president dea gee me, and land ah go build dea for gee d lucky poor families way dem live na street way ah go meet Freetown by God power“.
The citation for his award by Chozen Generation Sierra Leone as one of the Ten Most Outstanding Sierra Leoneans in 2020 reads: “FOR YOUR SELFLESS EFFORTS TO SERVE THE COUNTRY AND FLY THE NATION’S FLAG HIGH AS A FOOTBALLER AND FOR YOUR HUMANITARIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO SIERRA LEONE“.