Disenchantment with South Africa’s transition to non-racial democracy manifests in many spheres of life, including something as seemingly trivial as grassroots soccer. My ethnography of soccer examines the forlorn promise the sport holds for a section of black working men. An unknown aspiring soccer player, better known as amaXhosa Maradona, is stabbed by a teammate during a tavern brawl. My unexpected presence at his funeral prompted Lapsie, the father, to relate that he has ‘another son, who will become a professional soccer player’. Contrast this to Sam Meyiwa’s complain on a radio interview about his successful and much-admired professional soccer player son, Senzo Meyiwa. Senzo was murdered at his girl-friend’s home in October 2014 and his murder case remains unresolved. Frustrated with the lack of justice for his late son, Sam questions: how this could happen to someone as ‘well-known, who played for such a big team, the captain of our national soccer team’. If Lapsie’s words express that success in soccer promises dignified future, Sam’s words express a betrayal, a breach of the very promise. Such spontaneous and grief-ridden expressions allow access to subtler subaltern aspirations for dignity that mere material and professional success in soccer cannot explain. Contributing to the subfield of Anthropology of Sport, my attention to soccer and subaltern aspirations, achievements, and failings through the concept of personhood reflects on the histories and politics of migrant labour regimes particular to Southern Africa.