How football dreams turn into trafficking nightmare for African players

It is a story replicated at alarmingly high rates in Africa and Europe: upcoming footballers, mostly in their teens, are lured to Europe under the guise of a career in the continent’s top football leagues.

Many of these teens and their families go to great lengths to find huge sums of money, in the region of thousands of dollars, to finance these trips.

Most families are made to believe that the sum they pay to “agents” is a drop in the ocean compared to what they shall soon be earning in the major European clubs. For someone living in poverty and with the belief that they cannot attain success on the African continent, this is a deal that they can rarely afford to pass up.

A New Statesman article highlights one of the reasons behind the issue of trafficking young African footballers. While most cases are of teenagers looking for their big football break in Europe, it is increasingly becoming aware that families are paying for what they believe is a sure route to Europe.

Image: Bryan Snyder/Reuters/via New Statesman