In the summer of 2008, the president of football’s international governing body, Sepp Blatter, responded to a question regarding Cristiano Ronaldo’s apparent desire to leave Manchester United and join Real Madrid, the club the Portuguese had regularly described as his childhood treasured, by equating the contractual situation to modern-day slavery. “The important thing is we should also protect the player,” said Blatter, before continuing: “If the player wants to play somewhere else, then a solution should be found, because if he stays in a club where he does not feel comfortable, then it’s not good for the player or the club. I’m always in favour of protecting the player and if the player, he wants to leave, let him leave. I think in football there’s too much modern slavery in transferring players or buying players, and putting them somewhere.”
The reaction to the FIFA leader’s comments, not least from Sir Alex Ferguson’s office door, was of overwhelming outrage, seeing as Blatter conveyed either a tenuous grasp of history, or simply the unforgivably insensitive use of the term ‘slavery’ in relation to the purportedly unfair treatment of Ronaldo. Eschewing the comparison of historical slave conditions, modern-day slavery is broadly defined as the submission to authority for the purpose of economic exploitation; in other words, a confusingly inaccurate way to describe a professional athlete’s request for the termination of his willingly signed £100,000+ a week contract with arguably the world’s largest firm, in order to make £250,000 a week playing for one of his current employer’s biggest continental competitors.
Despite a reputation for trimming unruly influences, Ferguson tirelessly convinced his star asset to remain at Old Trafford for a further season, when he ‘reluctantly’ scored 25 goals as United reached the Champions League final for the second consecutive year following Premier League and Carling Cup triumphs, before eventually securing his protracted move to Madrid in July of 2009. It is widely considered that Real dwarfed their original investment of £80million in terms of shirt-sale income within hours of Ronaldo’s arrival, perhaps loosely exposing the economic exploitation Blatter had referred to a year earlier. I’m going to avoid describing the multifarious allegations of a more sinister nature that have littered Blatter’s presidency, but instead focus on an issue which the Swiss was so comfortable presenting his opinion on, albeit in an erroneous context.
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It seems peculiar that the individual who retains a universal scale of influence in terms of football’s governance expressed his support for player protection when each year, thousands of young and vulnerable footballers are misled and manipulated by rogue agents, taken from their homes with the false promises of wealth and stardom, and then left to fend for themselves on foreign soil when the brutal reality is hastily acknowledged. This growing army of migrant talent has become a familiar part of the landscape in several major European cities, with children as young as 9 forced to beg on the streets of Milan or sell fake Prada handbags in Paris just to survive. The outcome these youngsters are guaranteed is as far removed as possible from the glamorous dream sold by Didier Drogba and Michael Essien, whose faces adorn every billboard in the Ivory Coast and Ghana respectively, selling anything from chocolate to mobile phones. But what is driving this damaging and abusive process and what measures are being conceived to prevent its intensification?
The reality, particularly in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, where a large number of globally established footballers have been exported recently, is that the greater the success had by West African players in Europe, the vaster number of domestic Africans will believe they can follow this path. This has resulted in a substantial growth in the number of illegal football academies being established in Africa, offering children as young as six the chance to be noticed, with roughly 500 operating in Ghana’s capital, Accra, alone. Around 90% of these ‘centres’ are run by local men who claim to be ex-professional footballers, but in fact have limited experience, and are united in their shared intent on discovering the next Stephen Appiah or Asamoah Gyan; or a multi-million pound resource. Most of them charge subscription rates to the enrolled students’ parents and extended families, who, in several cases, remove them from routine schooling to allow them to concentrate on football full-time. The financial rewards reaped from having a professional footballer in the family evoke a rags to riches scenario of Hollywood proportions, so many consider the risk to their child’s education worth taking.
