The blog Liberia and Friends reports that the American actor and director Dermot Mulroney will develop and probably direct a biopic on the life of Liberian football legend George Weah.

Weah, the 1995 FIFA World Player of the Year and one of the few players with a legitimate claim to be Africa’s best ever footballer, has never played in the World Cup. That means the Mozambican Eusebio, a star of the 1966 World Cup, has a slight edge on him to claim that title. That Liberia was never a football power has a lot to do with it. His best football was played with Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan in European club football. Liberia almost qualified for the 2002 World Cup once, but that’s the closest they came. They’ve been to the African Cup of Nations twice. In 1996 and 2002. When they qualified for the first time, national coach, Wilfred Lardner was honest: “We must give thanks first to God and then to George Weah.”

Mulroney knows a thing or two about acting in films about football. He starred in a film about a young soccer player, “Gracie.” IMDB describes the plot thus: Grace, a football enthusiast, fights an uphill battle to play in the boys’ varsity team of her high school [in New Jersey] and gain support for women’s soccer while dealing with the death of her brother.” Mulroney plays the father, a former player “freighted with his own childhood issues— . . .  only interested in training his three sons.” The Chicago Sun-Times’ review was full of praise for Mulroney: “Mulroney delivers one of his best performances to date as the complicated and often conflicted father. This largely under-appreciated actor truly steps up to the plate, playing a man who loves his daughter, but is still controlled by the prejudices of his generation.” As for African topics, Reuters reports that he is producing a film about Sudanese refugees.

I hope the filmmakers do justice to the many special moments in Weah’s career, like the end-to-end goal in this video that he scored for AC Milan in Italy, or this goal for PSG vs. Bayern Munich in 1994. Another question is which actor will play the lead role. Idris Elba, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Djimon Hounsou, and Chiwetel Ejiofor could all be good candidates.

As for Weah, he is now a politician and will probably run for president again in Liberia’s elections next year. And he has tried his hand at writing op-eds.