It was a proud moment as a young African footballer. Not only did Africa host the first-ever World Cup, but some of the sport’s greatest stars were also African for the first time. Many of them grew up in the fields with dreams of achieving fame and fortune on football’s biggest stage. Everyone wants to go to Europe. This is hope. But some have capitalized on that hope. Brave young men are certainly a trade, they are sold like cattle.
Thousands of young players are being lured from their home countries. Their families have been scammed by predatory agents out of what little savings they may have, making promises that will almost certainly not be kept. These boys are often abandoned, broke and alone. Africa matures because Africa is poor. Football is fame, football is money. Marianne Van Zeller travels from the sands of West Africa to the immigrant enclave of Morocco and finally to the black market games of Paris in search of boys lost in football.
Francis Tamba is 17 years old and comes from Conakry, Guinea, West Africa. He’s a football player, or for the rest of the world, he’s a football player. He prayed that he would one day play for Chelsea, like Didier Drogba did. This is the biggest dream of his life. Didier Drogba was a goal machine for Chelsea in England. He is a world-class superstar and multi-millionaire. Its success inspired the ambitions of a generation of young Africans, including Francis.
Francis believes he has taken the first steps towards his dream of becoming a football star. While training in his native Guinea, he was approached by a football agent who said Francis had the talent to play him in a friendly against one of Spain’s giants, Atletico Madrid. He told him to go to Morocco first and then to Spain. “It was the happiest day of his life,” Francis said, but there was one problem…the agent asked for $4,000 in advance for travel and other expenses. His father pinned the family’s hopes on Francis and agreed to contribute the money. But when Francis arrived in Morocco, the agent was missing.
