exhibition
Boards

Human trafficking and plunder?


Ever since the introduction of professional football Africans have served as labour for European leagues. In 1938, for example, 147 African players were already playing in French leagues.

Numerous successes by Nigeria and Ghana at the U-17 World Championship launched in 1985 and the deregulation of the European transfer market following the Bosman ruling led to a sharp increase in the number of Africans playing in European leagues in the 1990s. While there were just a few dozen African first-division players in the mid-1980s, the figure had risen to over 1,000 by the turn of the millennium.

Yet "for every raw diamond there are 99 poor-quality ones", says Belgian senator Jean-Marie De Decker. He estimates that as many as 500 Africans arrive at Brussels airport each year with the objective of going into football. Most come on tourist visas, many without a return ticket. Only a fraction are handed a contract. Yet for many, the incentive of staying in an affluent Europe is overwhelming - despite the threat of illegality.

Exploitation and illegal trafficking in players is a problem throughout Europe. With regard to Belgium, Klaus Federmair of the Austrian magazine Ballesterer wrote: "The dream begins with the flight ticket. An agent promises the talented young African player a contract with a major European club. Hotel accommodation, an initial trial the next day, everything has been organised. A few training sessions later the agent has disappeared and the doorman wants the teenager out. He finds himself on the street in a strange town far from home. He has nowhere to live, no papers, no knowledge of the language, no money and no contacts."

One dramatic example was the scandal involving underage players in Italy that rocked Italian football in 1999 and drew the attention of parliament. According to the Italian Football Association, some 5,000 youngsters under the age of 16 were playing in Italy's amateur leagues, most of them from West Africa, Morocco and Albania. Ninety percent of these football migrants quickly disappear and scrape a living as tomato pickers or window cleaners without being in possession of a residence permit.

The machinations of fraudulent agents are chiefly to blame for such exploitation. They pay parents a handful of dollars to take their teenagers away and possibly con them into a 7-10 year contract. Players are given very low salaries before being sold on to Europe for large sums of money or dumped.

The world governing body, FIFA, responded by introducing a licensing system for players' agents. Yet young African players often avail themselves of the services of non-licensed agents out of necessity. In 2003 FIFA prohibited the international transfer of players under the age of 18.

Transfers within the EU, and cases where a family moves abroad for reasons that have nothing to do with sport, are an exception to this. The new regulation has done little to change the situation in practice. Merely the cost of transfers has increased.

A springboard for African players?
Former French international Jean-Marc Guillou, who runs a football school in Ivory Coast and works closely with local club ASEC Abidjan, has chosen KSK Beveren as his European base. Since 2001 he has been able to introduce talented young African players to the European market, as there are hardly any restrictions on players from non-EU countries in Belgian football. A host of major international clubs, especially English ones, maintain links with Belgian clubs for the purpose of testing young players.

In Beveren the strong xenophobic party Vlaams Blok are being joined in venting their resentment about the presence of as many as 17 players from the Ivory Coast in their team by increasing numbers of fans and local people. Team captain Arsène Né says he is frequently followed by security personnel in the supermarket and is then snapped at by the cashier due to language problems. We have no contact at all. The atmosphere is at rock-bottom. The blacks live their lives, we live ours", said Kristof Lardenoit, one of the few non-Africans in the squad, in 2004.