The Observer delves into the world of one of soccer’s many “football factories” in the developing world, where boys as young as nine “are being exploited by businessmen who hope to profit from negotiating transfers to big European clubs.” In Ivory Coast, which has produced the likes of Arsenal’s Emmanuel Eboue and Chelsea’s Didier Drogba and Salomon Kalou, author Dan McDougall says a small group of Lebanese businessmen have opened illegal training schools in Abidjan, the capital, where they farm out talent to clubs in Europe and the Middle East.
Living in squalor in a country plagued by war, starry-eyed youngsters dream of becoming the next Drogba or Kalou, but the reality is that once the players are transferred, the businessmen supply false papers, take their 50 percent cut and have nothing more to do with them. The players often earn very little, and in some cases are released. Many end up stranded, or worse, homeless. One former player, Mon Emmanuel, claims that 90 percent of Africa’s exports “end up on football’s growing scrap heap.”
Last year, FIFA President Sepp Blatter accused Europe’s leading clubs of conducting themselves “as neo-colonialists who…engage in social and economic rape” in scouring the developing world for cheap talent. “Football slavery exists in Africa,” one of the Lebanese businessmen conceded. “But Africa has long been exploited for diamonds, for gold, for its people, so why should footballers be any different?”