As South Africa hosts the 2010 World Cup, the focus will be on many of the continent's brightest stars in soccer, including Chelsea's Didier Drogba and Inter Milan's Samuel Eto'o. In "Soccer's Lost Boys," correspondent Mariana van Zeller explores the dark side to the sport's global popularity, what has been called "the new slave trade."
As more and more money flows into professional European soccer leagues, the demand for young West African players has skyrocketed -- and so has the number of unlicensed agents, illegitimate soccer academies, and shady middlemen looking to exploit these players. For a very small percentage of these West African youngsters, their dreams of playing professionally in Europe come true.
The rest face a litany of horrors: deadly Mediterranean crossings, broken promises, vanishing agents, brutal living conditions, and families torn apart. It's estimated that 20,000 young African soccer players are now stranded in Europe. Many more never even make it that far and remain stuck in transit, in port towns across Africa.
Mariana retraces the journey that these West African players often take in their quest to make it big in Europe. On the dirt fields of Ghana, she spends a week with a youth coach hungry to sell his players. In the slums of Morocco, she meets a growing community of West African players abandoned by agents who promised them professional contracts with European teams. And in Paris she witnesses how these trafficked players get forced underground, living illegally and putting their last hopes in shady, black market games where the best players compete for the attention of the agents and managers in attendance. The journey is full of heartbreak but along the way Mariana also meets a handful of individuals fighting for change, most notably the director of a soccer academy in rural Ghana called Right to Dream.
As more and more money flows into professional European soccer leagues, the demand for young West African players has skyrocketed -- and so has the number of unlicensed agents, illegitimate soccer academies, and shady middlemen looking to exploit these players. For a very small percentage of these West African youngsters, their dreams of playing professionally in Europe come true.
The rest face a litany of horrors: deadly Mediterranean crossings, broken promises, vanishing agents, brutal living conditions, and families torn apart. It's estimated that 20,000 young African soccer players are now stranded in Europe. Many more never even make it that far and remain stuck in transit, in port towns across Africa.
Mariana retraces the journey that these West African players often take in their quest to make it big in Europe. On the dirt fields of Ghana, she spends a week with a youth coach hungry to sell his players. In the slums of Morocco, she meets a growing community of West African players abandoned by agents who promised them professional contracts with European teams. And in Paris she witnesses how these trafficked players get forced underground, living illegally and putting their last hopes in shady, black market games where the best players compete for the attention of the agents and managers in attendance. The journey is full of heartbreak but along the way Mariana also meets a handful of individuals fighting for change, most notably the director of a soccer academy in rural Ghana called Right to Dream.
(Thanx Stan!)
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