Shaq Moore: The American Who Went from Worshipping Messi to Marking Him

It's every young footballer's dream: playing a match at the Camp Nou. Shaquell Moore, or "Shaq" as his teammates at Levante call him, tingles again when he recalls the memory. What springs to mind is that he used to "play" at the Camp Nou on FIFA as a kid growing up in Powder Springs, a town on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia, that could pile its inhabitants into the stadium five times without filling it.

Now here he was in early January 2018 as a 21-year-old getting to experience the real thing in a La Liga match against Leo Messi's Barcelona. "Actually being able to play there was crazy," he says. "We got there an hour-and-a-half before, and you walk in, and there's no one there and you look around and you see how big it is."

It was a daunting task. It was the first league game of the year. Barcelona had just smoked Real Madrid 3-0 at the Bernabeu in their previous league match and were six points clear of the pack at the top of the table with a game in hand. They were unbeaten in 24 outings. When Moore—who grew up idolising Ronaldinho and Messi—walked down the tunnel before kick-off, he could hardly believe his surroundings.

"From the locker room, you come up, and there's a wall," he says. "It has all the best Barcelona teams—with Pep [Guardiola] and Ronaldinho—[on] a big poster. I watched all these games [they played] on TV, the Champions League final. Obviously being in the tunnel, looking to my left, you see Messi, [Andres] Iniesta, [Ivan] Rakitic. That was a kind of surreal moment. At the end of the day, I had to go out there [and I] had a game to play. After the game, I took time to sit back and think, 'Yeah, that was pretty cool.'"

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Moore, who was playing on the right side of defence, got to see Messi up close and personal. Again, he had to pinch himself. Images from Messi's highlight reel flashed across his mind. "It was crazy," Moore says. "All the YouTube videos that I used to watch when I was growing up of Messi popped up in my head."

Moore's overwhelming urge when confronted with Messi was to protect his goal. Survival instincts kicked in. "The fact that when he has the ball, and he's in your half, he wants to kill you every single time," Moore says. "He's always looking for goal, looking for this pass, looking to surprise you or to score. I had never really seen that before in a player—to always want to break you down, break you down, with a pass, a shot, score, whatever. That was amazing to see in person how good he was."

Messi plays, Messi scores. Only a dozen minutes had passed on the clock when he came in for the kill. Standing about 10 metres from Levante's box, he gathered a clearance, and while stepping back on his left foot he feathered a pass a couple of metres to the right of Moore onto Jordi Alba's head. Messi then ran into the box for the return, clipping a half-volley in off the post.

Moore admires the sense of calm that great players like Messi and Ronaldinho play with. It keeps them grounded, allowing them to flourish on the pitch, he says: "They always like to play with a flair. 'Tranquilidad,' we say in Spanish—to have fun and play with no pressure and have a good time."

What struck Moore about Barcelona's general style of play was that everything was ingrained. It was an education to him. "The intensity that they play with, how fast the game is," he says.

"[With] these guys, it's like clockwork—their first touch, their body, knowing where they want to go. [Watching] on TV, you don't really pay attention to it, but on the field [you see] it makes a big difference. Obviously they're good players, but the little things they do really well—being aware, checking their shoulder, their first touch, knowing where you want to go, playing quick. That little stuff sets them apart from other players."

Luis Suarez scored a second goal for Barcelona before half-time, but Levante kept battling. As the game drifted into its final third, Levante broke upfield. One of Levante's forwards got beyond Barcelona's defence, checked backfield, which threw Barcelona's covering defenders, and looked up to see Moore haring into the box unmarked.

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Moore had a fraction of a second to make a decision as the ball was rolled across to him. Barcelona's goalkeeper, the towering Marc-Andre ter Stegen, advanced towards him like a crab, making himself big in an effort to shut down Moore's space on goal. Moore didn't even have time to trap the ball. He hit it on the fly—a low, side-footed shot towards the corner of the net, but Ter Stegen managed to push out his left boot in time to block it, sending the ball out for a corner kick. It was a case of inches.

Several of the United States men's national soccer team were watching the game on television. They spoke with Moore about "the miss" when he was called up to the squad for an international friendly against Paraguay at Sahlen's Stadium in Cary, North Carolina, in March 2018.

"It was nice to see most of the guys from the national [team squad] watched the game against Barcelona, guys I looked up to, DeAndre Yedlin, all these guys," he says. "That was kind of comforting to see that—even if I had never been to a [national team] camp—they still pay attention to Americans abroad. They were talking to me about the miss: 'Shaq, if you had scored that, I would have been going crazy,' and this and that. 'Yeah, bro, I would have gone crazy too.'"

Moore had broken into Levante's first team a few months before the Barcelona league match. He's a pioneer—one of only four American footballers, along with former Spurs goalkeeper Kasey Keller, Jozy Altidore and Oguchi Onyewu, to play in La Liga. What sets Moore apart is that he has started his professional football career in Spain unlike the other three compatriots who dropped in mid-career. He has broken new ground.

Moore first set his sights on Spain while playing a tournament on the Canary Islands with the USA under-18 team. He returned for a trial and signed up for Huracan Valencia, but that quickly turned sour. The club ran into debt and was subsequently expelled from the league. Moore went unpaid.

"It was definitely tough—not getting paid for a couple of months, for me coming from outside," he says. "My family weren't here. Obviously my family helped me, but I was still here. Thank God I was in a residence. I didn't have to pay rent. I had food."

Getting through that ordeal—as well as learning a new language and the nuances of a different culture—has helped to steel him. "That helped me to be strong mentally and stick with it," he says. "Eventually things are going to turn around. It helped me to keep my head down and keep working, and control what I can control."

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After leaving Huracan Valencia, Moore was picked up by Real Oviedo on the other side of the country in the north-west of Spain, but he returned to the region of Valencia to sign with Levante. There, he played over 30 games with the club's reserve team before stepping in to the first-team squad.

It's no surprise that Moore—who was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and has five brothers—is carving out a career for himself in the sport. Football is the family trade. Both his dad Wendell Moore and his uncle Richard Goddard played on the national team for Trinidad and Tobago. He only got to see his dad play when he was winding down in his career.

"All our friends say he was really good," he says. "We go back to Trinidad and Tobago a bit. He's like a legend back there. He always gives me advice, what I can work on. He knows I'm kind of hard on myself. He says: 'Shaq, just let it go. You played the game. Forget about it. Try to get better for the next one.'"

Moore has plenty of games to play. He's signed a contract with Levante until 2020 and enjoys the life in Spain.

"I think I'm Spanish now, so I take a little siesta," he says with a laugh. "I live in Valencia—it's a beautiful city—so there's a lot to do. When it warms up, I like to chill at the beach, go into the centre a little bit, and chill with some of my teammates. That's pretty cool. I love Valencia. I love living here for sure."

Follow Richard on Twitter, @Richard_Fitz