🇻🇬 The BVI's goal-scoring lawyer is pushing for more World Cup qualification heroics
Hugo Costa Liziario is a threat to goalkeepers & opposing counsel
When British Virgin Islands manager Chris Kiwomya needed another forward on the men’s national team roster, he looked to the domestic league and picked out the top scorer. It’s hardly an unconventional move for an international manager.
The British Virgin Islands, however, has to have the only league in the world where the top scorer is a 31-year-old lawyer.
Nevertheless, Kiwomya still felt Hugo Costa Liziario of Wolues FC could do more for him than provide legal advice should he find himself in a jam.
So, after making sure the Portugal-born Liziario was eligible for the national team and seeing him in a couple of training sessions, Kiwomya named him in the squad for the first round World Cup qualification.
“I expect big things from you,” Liziario remembers the coach telling him, shortly after the forward drilled “an insane goal” on a volley off the post and in during a drill.
Liziario delivered on those expectations.
With the final whistle about to blow on the first leg of the two-match series with the U.S. Virgin Islands, the debutant raised his hand on the edge of the box, then crashed toward the goal and arrived just in time to slide and finish off a cross to equalize the match.
He played in both games of the series, with the BVI advancing on penalty kicks in the second round, the first time the team has advanced a round in World Cup qualification.
“I felt amazing,” Liziario said. “Hard to believe it was happening to me.
“It wasn’t the most beautiful goal I ever scored - far from it - but just was a sign of the strength I was playing with and the dedication I put in being 31 years old and having that hunger to score and really help the team.
“It was an unreal moment.”
A number of BVI players are pursuing soccer full-time, and Kiwomya largely has tried to bring “born and bred” players into the national team setup rather than bringing in foreign-born ringers or England natives who spend a short amount of time in the BVI to become eligible.
Liziario doesn’t really fit that mold, though, living in the territory and going into the office in Road Town for his day job.
And that day job is very much a job for Liziario. The most difficult part about his new international career is staying in playing shape while also putting in the office hours required to be a lawyer specializing in “complex, high value and cross-border commercial disputes” as firm Holman Fenwick Willan’s website says.
In the four-person HFW office in the British Virgin Islands, Liziario has won the support and admiration from his fellow solicitors.
“It’s very close-knit. They were just delighted with the whole thing, not just that I got called and to participate but played both legs and managed to score,” he said. “Just in the kitchen or communal space in the office, you get all that support. It’s just fantastic.”
It’s something he never imagined when, as a teenager, he and his family agreed he should give up on the dream of being a professional player.
After coming up in Estoril Praia’s academy, Liziario and his family felt the demands were too significant on them compared to the chance he’d actually make it as a pro in Portugal. He soon moved to the United States on an exchange program and started playing regularly again. He considered pursuing a legal career in the U.S. but was put off by the state-based registration system and headed to England instead.
There, he got his education as a lawyer and started to practice, but he also kept playing soccer at “a Sunday league standard, but it still kept me going,” he recalls.
After 11 years in the UK, he was drawn to the British Virgin Islands by the same reasons most ex-pats make the move: Sunshine, lower taxes and a sense of adventure.
He immediately started turning up to a Tuesday night six-a-side event and earned an invite from the captain of Wolues FC to join their squad.
There was just one hold-up: Liziario was still registered with boyhood club Estoril.
“I had to write to them to request to withdraw from them to be a free agent,” he said. “That was quite funny because I hadn’t been linked to them for more than 10 years.
“They probably didn’t even recognize my name or remember who I was, but that was part of the process.”
The Estoril youth coaches may still not recognize Liziario’s name after scoring in the first round of World Cup qualification. But the goal-scoring lawyer definitely is earning his plaudits in the British Virgin Islands, and he insists he’s not done yet.
Understandably, his fitness isn’t yet at the level of many of his teammates, and when he’s not working he’s training to improve the amount of time he can go in a top-level match. Liziario came into the second leg but was taken out before penalties.
With the win over the USVI, The Nature Boys earned at least four more World Cup qualification matches, and Liziario wants to contribute to all of them starting with June 8’s home date against Guatemala
.“They’re huge matches for us,” he said. “We’re conscious those teams are stronger than us, they have better rankings and players that come from better leagues, so it’ll be an uphill struggle.
“That being said, and part of the reason I love football so much, is you can never expect what’s going to happen on the pitch.”
Who knows that better than the attorney who, in his international debut at age 31, scored a critical goal late in a World Cup qualification match?
love this stuff, Jon.
This was such a great article! He's living the dream!