The Dark Side of the Beautiful Game: Football’s African Slave Trade

Saikat Chakraborty

17th March 2022 | 2:34 AM

For many young African footballers who migrate to Europe, their challenge is not to break into the starting XI, but to find something to eat, somewhere to sleep. This is the sad truth of one form of the modern African slave trade.

Modern Slavery in Football, African Agents European Clubs
Art by Charbak Dipta

At the age of 15, a boy from Accra in Ghana left his home and family in pursuit of greatness. An agent asked his parents for their fake death certificates so a club could sign their kid. The agent took all the money he had, his passport, his birth certificate, and the return plane ticket upon arriving in Paris. The kid was eventually forced into prostitution by the same agent. And this is not the saddest story. There are thousands of children who have suffered as a result of this slave trade.

For the better part of the last three decades, there has been a grave humanitarian crisis in African football. Though there are several reasons that worked together in this outcome, veteran coach Claude LeRoy said, it is because of Africa’s poor academy system, where some agents are slave merchants. In a 2018 interview with BBC Sports, Leroy, who led Cameroon to the African Cup of Nations title in 1998, said, “The only target of these agents is to sell players for a little bit of money. I’m fighting against this kind of people for more than 20 years.” 

Some reports claim that more than 15,000 trafficked players enter Europe every year. Inspired by the glamour of the continent’s top leagues and cajoled by agents who tell them they can be the next big star, these children from Africa leave their families for the football pitches of England, Spain, France, and Germany to make their fortune. However, their dreams quickly become nightmares. Instead of promised on-field battles for the big European clubs, they are faced with a fight for survival. The challenge is not to break into the starting XI, but to find something to eat, somewhere to sleep. 

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