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The scandal of Africa`s trafficked players (06.01.2008)
Dan McDougall
Sunday January 6, 2008
The Observer
They come to Europe to play for AC Milan or Paris St-Germain, but the reality for many talented young African footballers, children not much older than nine, is that they will find themselves selling fake handbags on the streets. As the world marvels at the skills on display at African Nations Cup, we report from Ghana, Ivory Coast and France on a shocking new type of people trafficking
It is breakfast time in the slums of Jamestown, outside the Ghanaian capital, Accra. From underneath corrugated tin shacks and slum tarpaulins come the metallic clatter of early morning chores and the promise of plantains and hot milk. Defying their mothers, the local children are already on the beach playing football; they kick tightly wound balls of rags and elastic bands among piles of shattered bricks, shards of asbestos and broken glass. In the watery light of dawn their skinny chests bear the torn strips and faded club crests of teams from across Europe: Schalke, Ajax, Torino, Portsmouth, Benfica.
Behind the children, a weather-beaten billboard poster of Michael Essien stands guard over the foul-littered bay. Holding out a ball dotted with black stars, his country`s national symbol, the Ghana and Chelsea midfielder beckons fans to `Be Proud` and help Accra`s city fathers with a clean-up of the city in preparation for this month`s African Nations Cup.
By mid-afternoon there are still many skipping school, or their chores, as they dream of becoming the next African millionaire to play in the Champions League for Chelsea. And, as the afternoon passes and the heat recedes, every spare patch of land in Accra, from dusty railway sidings to disused quarry floors, becomes dotted with young footballers.
These are not mere kickabouts. They are the unlicensed football `academies` of Accra, which have sprung up in response to the rising profile of African footballers in Europe. According to the Confederation of African Football, the sport`s governing body in the continent, all such institutions must be registered with the local government or football association. The reality in Ghana and neighbouring Ivory Coast is that the greater the success of West African players in Europe, the more unaccredited academies spring up. Most demand fees from the children`s parents and extended families, who often take them out of normal schooling to allow them to concentrate on football full-time. Since having a professional footballer in the family would be the financial equivalent of a lottery win, many reckon the risk to their child`s education worth taking. As we discovered, some even sell their family homes and move to the city in order to enrol their children.
There are an estimated 500 illegal football academies operating in Accra alone. Thousands more are spread across Ghana. Many are run by the roadside; most have no proper training facilities. With biblical names such as `Sons of Moses` and `Lovers of Christ`, each will have its own tatty bibs or T-shirts to distinguish it from the others. At the children`s side, egging them on to run, pass, think quicker, will be a legion of unlicensed agents and coaches. Ninety per cent of the academies we visited in Accra and Abidjan - the principal city of Ivory Coast - were run by local men with limited experience of the game. Most described themselves as former footballers; but none was able to produce proof of his career. They are intent on finding one thing only: the next Essien or Didier Drogba. The next multi-million-pound golden ticket.
Coaches, as well as European and Arab middlemen, haggle over the best players, signing some as young as seven on tightly binding pre-contracts - effectively buying them from their families - with the hope of making thousands of dollars selling the boys on to clubs in Europe. In other cases, they extort the cost of passage from their families. Many take the deeds on houses and even family jewellery in return for their services. This process of exploitation is raising alarm among West Africa-based NGOs including Save the Children and Caritas. Tony Baffoe, the former Ghana captain, now an ambassador for this year`s African Nations Cup, admits that `the trafficking of children to play football is a reality we must all face`. `There must be better control of illegal academies across Africa,` Baffoe continues. `Families should be questioning these coaches, not putting all their hopes and life savings into the relationship they have with them.`
Barefoot, his training bib flapping and exposing his skinny ribs, Mafiua Asare runs with the ball. The unmarked pitch, with the sea on one side and one of Accra`s largest slums on the other, is 90 per cent red earth and 10 per cent sand. The goalposts are rusted. The level of skill shown by the 10- and 11-year-old players is undeniably exceptional.
Mafiua`s progress towards the goal is halted by a gust of wind that whips up red dust and burning debris from a waste dump adjacent to the pitch. As he stops to rub his eyes and gather his breath, the boy is clattered in a tackle from his 23-year-old coach, Isaac Aloti. `You must learn never to stop little one,` he chastises his floored and bruised pupil.
Aloti - who claims to be a `football expert` and former player, yet is unable to give the name of any team he has played for - introduces me to two of his star players, Daniel Vijo and Imano Buso, both 12. `These are my boys,` he says. `I have their contracts, their parents` signatures; they will go for trials in Europe when they are ready. We have already had some interest from a Paris Saint-Germain scout. The scouts come here and comb the city, looking at boys, looking for a glimmer, that piece of magic. Both these kids have it.`
The Jay Gyemie Academe (sic) has signed Daniel on a contract that promises Aloti 50 per cent of his first professional signing-on fee. Aloti says the contract is fair to all parties involved. `If Daniel makes it then I will expect a reward for my time, for the expertise and skills I have taught him. His parents know this and they will not consent to the boy going without my cut. In the meantime, the family are saving to pay me the money for his journey to France; I can make everything smooth for the boy.`
`Isaac will help me achieve my dreams,` says Daniel, who has been taken out of school, and whose family has moved to Accra to enrol him in an academy. `My mother has put her faith in him and my family is saving for my journey to France, where I can go on trial. We will pay Isaac the money and I will leave for my family. If I make it, I will take my mother to France with me and buy her a house in Paris.`
In Daniel`s case, a legal trip to Europe is unlikely and, given the credibility of the academy, securing a trial would be virtually impossible. His most likely option is to travel to Europe illegally, using one of the many and dangerous boat routes from the west coast to the Canary Islands, and from there to the Spanish mainland. In May last year one of those boats, a leaking fishing trawler abandoned by its skipper, washed up on the shore of La Tejita beach in Tenerife with a cargo of 130 young African men. Some had hypothermia, all were badly dehydrated. Fifteen were teenagers who believed they were on their way to play for Marseille or Real Madrid.
The desire among young Africans to become professional footballers is evident in the number of children who recently attended continent-wide trials for the Aspire sports academy in Qatar. Fighting for around 23 places on Aspire`s coveted football programme, approximately 750,000 children, from Ghana to Kenya and Nigeria to South Africa, went to trials.
For the children`s families there is no greater glory and financial reward than footballing success in Europe, despite impossible odds. By West African standards, Ghana is doing well: steady economic growth, a stable, relatively democratic government and broad support from the West. By developed world standards, however, it remains desperately poor: a third of the population lives on less than a dollar a day, life expectancy is 60 for a child born today, and basic services such as electricity and water are often scarce. For the parents of young boys, the idea of their child succeeding in the football world is a considerable temptation, even when it means putting their education at risk.
In their suburban family home, Tina and Vivian Appiah bump and grind to Jamaican dance-hall music. Behind them is a huge portrait of their elder brother Stephen Appiah, a former football academy pupil who is now a millionaire five times over and Ghana`s national captain. The Fenerbahce midfielder recently bought his sisters a beauty parlour and they now have someone run it for them. Their days are spent at leisure, watching television and ordering pizza.
`Stephen is a God in Ghana. Like a superman,` Tina says with a laugh. `We are proud to be his sisters. His success has made all his family comfortable and made anyone who knows us insanely jealous. We can eat in five-star hotels and travel to Europe; we visited Stephen in Milan and also in Germany. He is now in Turkey and we hope to go soon.` Despite their brother`s wealth, the large villa is still threadbare and unkempt. The girls aren`t so keen on housework.
`Everyone wants our life,` Vivian says. `The local women want success for their sons or brothers so they can have this. Were we sad when Stephen left us for the West? Sad? No, we were happy. Our mother had prayed to God for his success. When Stephen was a young boy he was very good at football and we all wanted to help him. My mother sold our television to pay for his boots, and the other children didn`t complain because they wanted to help him too. We helped him - so now he can help us.`
Success stories such as that of Appiah, who was picked up by a scout while playing for Ghana`s under-17 team in Italy, have had a positive effect. In West Africa serious money is being invested by European giants such as the Dutch clubs Ajax and Feyenoord, who both operate academies in Ghana. French clubs such as Paris Saint-Germain and Monaco also maintain scouting networks in the region. English clubs have yet to catch on, although Manchester United have bought a controlling interest in Fortune FC, a South African second-division side. An English-backed academy cannot be far away. For the clubs it is a tempting notion. Just one top-class player every five years would cover the running costs. These accredited academies, if well run such as the Feyenoord set-up in Accra, offer boys not only top coaching, but an education. Academies run with this kind of professionalism are rare, however.
Charities and NGOs across West Africa are now voicing their concern about the activities of illegal football academies. The exploitation of young footballers has even been called a new `slave trade` and is leaving a tragic legacy of homeless young footballing hopefuls across Europe. `This football-related trafficking and the widespread creation of so-called schools of excellence is an area of huge growing concern for Save The Children,` says Heather Kerr, the charity`s Ivory Coast country manager. `The motivation for these children joining these footballing schools and being trafficked out of the country is purely about money and that is not surprising as these families are incredibly poor. Quite often we find it`s the parents who send their
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children to the West or take their children out of school and force them to concentrate on becoming footballers because they want the youngsters to earn more money for the family.`
Last year Sepp Blatter, president of Fifa, football`s world governing body, accused Europe`s richest clubs of `despicable` behaviour and engaging in `social and economic rape` as they scour the developing world for talent. But in many ways the problems for Africa begin at home. Earlier this year many players and officials were banned and four Ghanaian clubs were demoted to the third division in a match-fixing scandal, after a promotion play-off ended in a 31-0 win, though some of the punishments have been quashed on appeal. In Cameroon, players and club officials were banned from the sport for a number of years after a similar scandal. In diplomatic circles, passports for young players are regularly bought and sold. Marie-George Buffet, a former French Sports Minister, recently claimed that many French-run academies, both in France and in Africa, were corrupt and run by unlicensed agents who needed controlling.
During our visit to West Africa, we found boys from Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Mali playing for teams in Ivory Coast and Ghana in the hope of gaining passports from - and eventually playing for - their adopted nation. This clearly contravenes Fifa`s eligibility rules, which state that a player must have a `clear connection` with their national team, such as a parent or grandparent who was born in the relevant country.
In Accra, Kingsley Chibueze, in his late teens, tells me he is recovering from an injury inflicted on him during a tough derby. He is wearing the national strip of Ghana yet he is from Nigeria, having travelled here with two friends to enrol at an academy. `Many of the boys on the pitch are from other countries - Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger,` he says. `Even those who don`t make it in Abidjan come here. Thousands of boys migrate to Accra because here we have a better chance of being spotted by a scout. No European scout is crazy enough to go to the slums of Lagos.
`I am a Nigerian but I am trying, like many others, to get a passport for Ghana. My uncle has travelled from Lagos with me, he has paid the money for my passport, so I am just waiting. I hope to play for Ghana`s youth team and tour in Europe, that is my best chance of being spotted.`
On the streets of Accra, touts and agents advertise `passport services` - everything from form-filling for the illiterate, to fake birth certificates - and are finding a new market for their criminal enterprise in young footballers.
Samuel Mundo, a passport agent, told us that it takes only US $100 to secure a Ghanaian passport. `There is a lot of corruption here. When money is short, it is always possible to cut corners. We get many coaches here, paying for passports for their players. Most of the young men we get passports for are from Burkina Faso and Nigeria, but also from Mali and even as far as Cameroon. For a young footballer to have a passport from Ghana is a huge deal, because this is where the best teams come to look for players. To play for Ghana is the dream of many young African boys, to be like Essien or Appiah.`
According to Kingsley`s coach, Kofi Bawuah, at least 20 per cent of the most talented youngsters in Accra`s academies are immigrants from other parts of West and Central Africa. `We have had boys playing for us from Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, Liberia... I could go on. They all come here to play and the best ones get passports for Ghana. The authorities here know the importance of football and the right word from a respected coach or money in the right hands will ensure a passport appears. They are picking the best apples from the tree and it isn`t just happening in Ghana.
`Many of the Ivory Coast international players were born in Burkina Faso. Everything is fluid and with the right influence or money you can become part of any country. Kingsley has real talent, but he is Nigerian. That doesn`t mean he won`t play for Ghana.`
One man who knows all about the subject is Professor Pierre Lanfranchi, an expert in the development of football worldwide and a consultant to Fifa. He says corruption in Africa, with poorly run national governing bodies, makes it easy for European clubs to cherry-pick the best young players and that there are no foundations to the professional game in Africa. `Fifa aim to start putting those foundations in place,` Lanfranchi says, `by keeping promising young players at home, at least for another couple of years, but when there is so much money thrown at young players` "agents" or representatives, it is an optimistic plan.`
In the stairwell of a concrete high-rise block in Clichy-sous-Bois, one of Paris`s worst ghettos, 17-year-old Bernard Bass sits shivering in the cold. Originally from Guinea-Bissau, he travelled from Ghana to Senegal to Tenerife on the promise of a trial with Metz, in eastern France, from a Lebanese agent. `My mother sold our house and my two younger brothers started work at 12 to help pay for my passage,` says Bass, who was told by the agent he could make the journey to France by boat. The journey took two weeks. `When we reached Europe I was kept in prison in Tenerife for a month and then flown to the mainland. I told my captors I was 18 and they let me go. I made it to France, but Metz had no idea who I was and threatened to report me to the police. Now I am here in Clichy-sous-Bois, staying on a friend`s floor.`
His friend, Effa Steve, also 17 and a midfielder from Equatorial Guinea, came to France two years ago with the promise of a trial with Dijon. His visa and flight had been arranged by a Bulgarian middleman in his home country. As with Bernard, his mother sold her house to get him to Europe. He did have a trial, but he suffered a knee injury and the club lost interest. He has since been living in a high-rise squat in the Montrouge district of Paris. `My visa expired after 30 days and Dijon said they had no interest in me,` Steve says. `I came to Paris and stayed on, hoping for another trial. That was 2005. I play for an amateur team now, but the standard is very good and I don`t always get a game. My life now is about avoiding arrest and finding somewhere to stay at night. We make money selling fake Prada handbags in the markets around Montparnasse. I share the floor of an abandoned apartment with four others.`
Culture Foot Solidaire is a charity set up to help African teenagers trafficked or sent to Europe for football trials, then abandoned. I meet Jean-Claude Mbvoumin, the president of the charity, in its tiny office in the northern suburbs of Paris. `One top Spanish club have three young Cameroonian kids on their youth books. The boys are 10, 11, 12,` Mbvoumin claims. `So few make it, but they all come, more and more each year, and they are getting younger all the time. Thousands of kids to France. Everything is fluid in Africa - borders and passports. An increasing number of boys are coming by plane, not just the boats through the Canary Islands. One-month visas are easy to get with bribes in Africa, but after they fail their trials they stay on. They have nothing to go back to. These kids are as young as 14, they end up on the streets, worse off and in more danger than they could ever be at home.`
Working with the help of Paris`s desperately overstretched social-work programme, Mbvoumin, himself a former player from Cameroon, attempts to reach those boys most at risk. `We are presently following 800 boys at the moment, aged from 10 to 18. The summer is fine, they can sleep on the streets, but now the winter is here they become more desperate, they become criminals, drug users. They come here with agents` promises ringing in their ears and all they are left with is the sound of police sirens and the smell of rotting rubbish in high-rise flats.`
There is now a huge business to be made from football, says Mbvoumin, and it feeds on people`s dreams of a better life for their family. `In Africa, when an important man tells a family their son has talent, that family will do everything to raise the money to send that boy to the West, sell their house, their youngest sons, their life away. These vulnerable people are lured into a kind of debt slavery in the expectation of a better life. These brokers are getting $3,000 per child and offering to smuggle them out on the promise that they will sign for a big club. So many boys have gone missing in this way. Yes, some of these boys have real talent, but it is not an agent they need, it is a mother and father.`
In the tough Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, we meet Simon, an illegal Cameroonian immigrant. He is wearing just a black polo-neck despite the cold; he doesn`t own a jacket or a fleece. `I came here two years ago on a 30-day visa,` Simon says, `with the dream of playing for Paris Saint-Germain. In Cameroon I was a player. My family expected everything from me, when I left my mother hired out a local bar. They made a huge banner saying: "Good luck, we are so proud of you."
`After the club said no, part of me was too ashamed to return so I stayed on as an illegal. I tell my mother I will send money home soon, to pay the agent, I tell her that I am playing well. I feel like a condemned man, that my life is hopeless. I am 18 years old and in my village in Cameroon I am a hero.`
`There are some bad agents out there`
Emmanuel Eboue, Arsenal and Ivory Coast
When I was nine, I played in a small team in my hometown of Abidjan, in Cote D`Ivoire [Ivory Coast]. I played for them for five years before we played a friendly against the ASEC academy, a well known academy in the city, and their manager said he wanted me to join them.
I stayed at the academy for one-and-a-half years. It has a partnership with Beveren, the Belgian team, and every two years scouts come and pick out maybe three or four players to join the club. They told my agent that they wanted me. I played for Beveren for four years.
In Africa, and in Cote D`Ivoire especially, we have a lot of academies, but I don`t think children are being exploited. There are some bad agents, but there are also a lot of good people. My agent was a very good person who helped me very much. When I first came to Belgium he came with me and made everything possible.
`Young players need more help and attention`
Andre Bikey, Reading and Cameroon
I never went to a football academy; I started playing at school and near my home. I played for a third-division team and it was only when I was selected for the Cameroon under-17 team that I started to take football seriously. During a tournament in Italy the Espanyol manager invited me to a trial; now I`ve played in Spain, Portugal, Moscow and England.
Many European teams go to Africa to watch boys with a view to bringing them to their club. It used to be only a few players, but now, every year in Cameroon, many children are brought to Europe for trials.
A lot of young players in Paris have nothing; they have come from Africa and if their trial doesn`t go well they are left on the streets. Some agent will pick up the kid and take them to Europe, and if it doesn`t work out they abandon him. Young players in Africa do need more help and more attention.
http://football.guardian.co.uk/
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