Originally posted in February 2010.
As the Olympics begin and four months before the 2010 World Cup kicks off in South Africa, we take a look into a little-known world of human trafficking in professional soccer, from the slums of Cameroon to the EU Parliament.
A 2006 television ad for the soccer apparel company Puma follows the story of a young Cameroonian soccer player named Leon on his journey from the slums of Yaounde to international superstardom. Leon, who looks no older than 13, is spotted on the street by an agent (after, of course, being given a pair of new Puma boots by his family). The seamy-looking agent, complete with Bluetooth headset and conspicuous gold watch, leads the boy to highest level, to soccer glory – signing autographs, his face on billboards, and the eventual game-winning goal in an international tournament.
It is a narrative that permeates the West African mindset, seen in real-life responses to the success of Africans on the world’s soccer stage. It is a narrative that, in pervading the hopes and dreams of Africans, has led many into an illegal but socially sanctioned smuggling scheme that leave players stranded in Europe, without shelter, without safety, and without status.
As developed over the past decade, the illegal flow of young African soccer players into Europe is predicated on the commoditization of labor in European soccer, and is enabled by institutional failures on every level, from the regulation of passports and monitoring of migrants by state authorities, to labor standardization and enforcement by the governing bodies of sport. To deepen the failure of response, international and transnational organizations, both governmental and sporting, have failed to properly harmonize international standards and responses. It is a failure that tacitly perpetuates a cycle of destruction, a cycle of human trafficking, of false hopes, with families mortgaging their homes, their only property, their futures for a chance at reaching an almost impossible goal.
At stake is the future of African and European soccer – how it is played, who gets to play, and how the game is regulated, along with the safety and security of families and players across West Africa. This flow is poised to change the way soccer is played, viewed, bought and sold around the world. The flow illuminates the nexus of sport and development, and effects the families and players who are bankrupted and separated, and those who have yet to fall into the trap.
The solutions to the problem implicate groups from governments to clubs, and every sporting federation and international organization in between, including the UN, the EU, FIFA, and the Confederation of African Soccer (CAF). As pressure groups and the media grab hold of the story of the flow and spread it to the public, this migration pattern is slowly garnering attention. Whether it can trigger institutional response has yet to be seen.
Explosive African players are of tremendous value to European clubs, as evidenced by the massive sums they pay to secure African talent. After two successful seasons in the French league, Chelsea acquired Ivorian striker Didier Drogba in 2004 for almost $50 million. Stories like Drogba’s are becoming increasingly common. As far back as 1999, Arsenal paid £4.5 million for Nigerian Nkwankwo Kanu. In 2000, nearly half the players in the African Nations Cup played in a professional league overseas. With a demonstrated interest in African players, it follows that clubs are eager to reap the benefits of comparatively cheap soccer smuggling. It costs a club next to nothing to take on a 14 year old African snuck into Europe, keep him on the roster until he has either shown talent or failed (or been injured). Those that fail can be dumped, thanks to illegal and unfair contracting or, in some cases, having no contracts. Those that are cut are left in illegal limbo, with no legal employment options, no legal status, no way back to their homeland, and likely no licit status in European society. As Africa competes with South America as a pool of cheap labor for the European sporting economy, Africans are cutting the costs for their Northern consumers by being smuggled onto the continent, invisible to or ignored by the intergovernmental and sporting organizations of Africa and Europe.
The story of the flow is most easily and most often described as a modern day Scramble or Africa, complete with mercantile European capitalists benefitting from exploitation of resources, in this case labor, from Africa – the postcolonial “heart of darkness”. The appeal for both the rich European clubs and their poor African players is quite simply encapsulated, “European clubs buy young African players to run their businesses and benefit from such cheap labour and in return the African dream of striking rich is achieved.”
The institutional failures that facilitate the flow are most easily seen in Africa, where national federations, nor their international analogue, the Confederation of African Soccer (CAF), have the infrastructure or will to react to the flow. Senegal, a nation at the heart of the flow, currently maintains a skeletal soccer federation, held together after the resignation of federation members in a September 2007 row. The country lacks league soccer, and was barely able to mount a very poor showing at the 2008 Africa Nations Cup. On the eve of the 2010 World Cup qualifying matches, the crisis has even warranted attention from President Abdoulaye Wade, who noted a need to “put soccer in order”. Guinea, Sierra Leone and DR Congo all face bans on the use of their stadia for upcoming World Cup qualifier matches. In the case of Sierra Leone, it is the only stadium in the country. Failing infrastructure marks a multi-layered failure to prioritize the place of soccer in African society.
In summer 2006, Ivo Belet, rapportuer to the EU Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education authored a report entitled “The future of professional soccer in Europe”. The Belet Report outlines the legal justification for EU involvement in the regulation of the game in Europe, noting that the issues confronting the game “can not be tackled by soccer governing bodies alone,” and that it is “important that a constructive dialogue between European institutions and sport governing bodies takes place.” In a section concerning the social and cultural role of soccer, Betel endorses action to prevent the award of contracts to minors, as well as stressing the need for equity in player contracts, claiming that nearly half of the professional players in Europe lack employment contracts, and still more contracts are “legally problematic.” Belet goes on to recommends to European Parliament the creation a regulatory framework to align to disparate regulations of the European game, as well as an action plan to address the legal ability to address the challenges he outlines. Belet goes on the recommend the possible establishment of an EU sporting agency. The report, while not addressing directly the problem of illegal soccer migration, is still incomplete, at best. Belet’s recommendations, if enacted, would initiate a law-enforcement response to the problem of illegal soccer migration, but would do little to address the development issues connected to it, nor would it function with respect to the multi-dimensional nature of soccer governance. That multi-dimensional nature has, so far, stymied any real progress toward ending the illegal flow or softening the sharp edges of the new African Dream. With another World Cup looming this year, this time in Africa, it’s all the more likely that false hopes will be stoked once again, and the cycle can feed itself for years to come. — AR
