Sport in Society

ISSN: 1743-0437 (Print) 1743-0445 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fcss20

African migrants in Asian and European football:

hopes and realities

Raffaele Poli

To cite this article: Raffaele Poli (2010) African migrants in Asian and European football: hopes
and realities, Sport in Society, 13:6, 1001-1011, DOI: 10.1080/17430437.2010.491269

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2010.491269

Published online: 27 Jul 2010.

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 Sport in Society
Vol. 13, No. 6, August 2010, 1001–1011

African migrants in Asian and European football: hopes and realities

Raffaele Poli*

Institute of Sport Sciences, University of Lausanne, Switzerland; International Centre for Sports
Studies, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland

This paper analyses the integration of Africa in the global labour market of football
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through the study of players’ migrations to Asia and Europe. The presence of African
footballers in the latter continent is analysed via a statistical survey carried out in
September and October 2008 on a sample of 456 top division clubs in 30 European
countries. The article emphasizes that the aspirations placed on football by male
African youth, as a means of upward social mobility, are often too high when compared
to the harsh realities of a transfer market based on commercial logics, which each year
push many footballers away from the professional game.

Introduction
African football is principally known for its expatriates present throughout the world, as
well as in the best European clubs. Having migrated thanks to their footballing prowess,
these players have become ambassadors for Africa similar to artists, writers or musicians,
with whom they are often compared.1 Through their performance, they show their
continent of origin in a more positive light than that normally portrayed by Western media.
The sporting success of footballers having migrated ‘with the ball’2 fuels the
imagination of young African boys and encourages them to aspire to a better future
through football. As underlined by Kate Manzo, football has become a ‘mantra of hope for
African development’.3 A large section of the African sporting press, as well as the sports
pages in the general press, cover expatriate stars: 282 out of the 335 images on the front
pages of the three Ivorian daily sports newspapers published in September 2009 represent
footballers. Players expatriated in Europe account for 75.8% of the total number of the
images, and 79.4% of the total area. According to several testimonials collected on the
field, they are welcomed as veritable heroes with each homecoming.
Didier Drogba appears to be a true icon in the Ivory Coast. During the month of the
analysis, he was portrayed in no less than 45 images. In terms of area, these represent
31.4% of the total space taken up by all the images published on the front page. As a whole,
pictures presenting expatriate players wearing the colours of their teams in Europe account
for 52.9% of the total area of images on the front page of those sports daily newspapers
taken into account. The media coverage of European football, and the cult of stardom of
footballers playing abroad, contribute to the construction of the myth of football as a
means of upward social mobility, which is widespread among the population.4
In reality, social and economic success through football remains mainly in the realm of
utopia. The case of upward career paths of players recruited in Africa to the big European
clubs are few and hide the numerous failures, not only sporting ones, which confront

*Email: raffaele.poli@unil.ch

ISSN 1743-0437 print/ISSN 1743-0445 online

q 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17430437.2010.491269
http://www.informaworld.com
 1002 R. Poli

players who leave the continent to pursue their ambitions abroad. Although difficult to
estimate, the proportion of African footballers coming to Europe for trials and who
succeed in signing a professional contract seems to be, in reality, very low. Since 2005, the
French NGO Culture Foot Solidaire, created by the former Cameroonian footballer Jean-
Claude Mbvoumin, has come to the aid of more than 1000 African players who have found
themselves in very precarious situations.
Being relatively cheaper than their colleagues from other continents, where
championships have a higher level of professionalism, African players are subjected to
a high level of commercial speculation.5 The amateurism in local leagues and the early
departure of the best players abroad affect the transfer sums that foreign clubs are prepared
to invest when signing players. While the recruitment of footballers from Latin America
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can cost more than e20 million, transfers carried out from sub-Saharan Africa rarely attain
more than e1 million, even for the most promising players. According to official sources
within the club, the transfer rights of the 24 players transferred abroad from 2000 to 2009
by the best Ivorian club, ASEC Mimosas of Abidjan, have been sold on average for
e336,250.
Speculation on the trading of players occurs in the context of transfer networks set up
by club officials and a whole series of other intermediaries, commonly known as agents,
whose objective is to increase the market value of players ‘on the move’, through
their circulation. In the milieu of professional football, circulation is a notion that can be
defined as a sequence of short stays in different cities carried out in the context of an
economic environment structurally organized to render it profitable, whereby transfers are
accompanied by an exchange of capital which benefits, for the most part, intermediaries
organized in investment companies and club managers.
This paper examines the presence of African players in Asia and in Europe. For the
latter continent, it bases itself chiefly on a statistical study carried out in September
and October 2008 comprising of a sample of 456 top-level clubs in competition in 30
UEFA member countries (Figure 1).6 The criterion for inclusion was to have participated
in at least one championship match since the start of the season or, if this was not the case,
to have taken part in professional matches during the two previous seasons. Given their
particular profile, all the goalkeepers present in the A-team were taken into account, up to
a limit of three.
The novel contribution of this paper is that it puts in perspective the common
representation of football as a means for social upward mobility and empirical research on
migration trends and career paths of African footballers abroad, in Europe as well as in
Asia. The latter continent plays an increasing role in the international circulation of players
from Africa.

African footballers in Asia

While the presence of professional African footballers remains limited in the Americas and
Oceania, they are very numerous in Asia. For example, transfer networks exist between
different African countries and India. In 2005, 12 footballers from six African countries
(South Africa, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, Benin and Zimbabwe) played in Indian clubs.7
One also finds several dozen African players in many countries of south-east Asia
(China, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, etc.). In February 2007, the Cambodian
football federation announced the closure of its borders to foreign footballers from the start
of the following season. The numerous Nigerian players still under contract to Cambodian
teams had to find an alternative destination. A few African footballers also commute each
 Sport in Society 1003
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Figure 1. Leagues taken into account in the 2008 demographic study.

year between different Asian countries. A dozen players, for example, take part in the
Bangladeshi championship, where the season lasts only from July to September. The rest
of the year most of them also play in the Hong Kong championship.
Since the beginning of the Nineties, Cameroonian players have been recruited by
Indonesian clubs. One of the first players to have migrated to Indonesia, Jules Denis
Onana, is still based in that country and works as a players’ agent through the company
Mutiara Hitam Sport and Management. In February 2010, according to the information
available on the company’s website,8 Onana managed the career of 22 players, half of
them from Cameroon and for the most part active in Asian countries (Indonesia, Malaysia,
Brunei, Qatar, Singapore).
The Persian Gulf countries also recruit many footballers in Africa. This recruitment
sometimes occurs at a very young age, as happens in the case of Aspire Academy of
Qatar.9 Under the direction of Josep Colomer, the man who discovered Lionel Messi for
Barcelona when the player was only 13, this academy has set up the project Africa
Football Dreams. This consists of a talent-scouting network covering 10 African countries
(Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda and
Tanzania). This project is also carried out in Asia (Vietnam, Thailand), in Central America
(Costa Rica, Guatemala) and South America (Paraguay). Since 2007, around 715,000
13 and 14-year-old players have taken part in trials and a dozen of them each year are
brought to Qatar as students. Some of the most promising African footballers are initially
transferred to Senegal, where they train in the Aspire African Academy in Thiès.
 1004 R. Poli

The aim of the Aspire Academy is not only to strengthen the Qatari national team,10 or
to improve the level of the local championship, it is also of an economic nature. Indeed, the
goal is to nurture young talent with a view to ulterior transfer to Europe. As in Maghreb,
the Persian Gulf has become a launching pad for sub-Saharan African footballers who
dream of joining European clubs. The career paths of Ivorians Kader Keita and Boubacar
Sanogo, or the Nigerian John Utaka exemplify this process.
After a brief stay in Sweden at the age of 17 organized by Alfred Obrou, an Ivorian
players’ agent resident in Stockholm, Kader Keita returned to the Ivory Coast to play for
Africa Sports club in Abidjan. After one year, he was transferred to Tunisia, to the Etoile
Sportive du Sahel club, where he stayed for one season. From Tunisia, he left for the
United Arab Emirates and was signed to the Al Aı̈n club. A year later, he was recruited by
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the Qatari team of Al Saad Doha. After three years in Qatar, Keita was signed by OSC
Lille for an estimated fee of three million euro.11 Two years later, the French club made
a considerable capital gain by selling the rights of the player to Olympique Lyonnais for
about e16 million. On the contrary, Olympique Lyonnais made a considerable loss
transferring him two years later to Galatasaray Istanbul for e8.5 million.
The career path of Boubacar Sanogo also initially led the Ivorian player to Tunisia.
This footballer was transferred at the age of 17 from the small club of Siroco FC San Pedro
to Espérance of Tunis. Sanogo stayed for three years in Tunisia, where he set off again for
Al Aı̈n of the United Arab Emirates. After three seasons in the Gulf, his performances
attracted the attention of the German club Kaiserslautern, who paid e500,000 to secure his
services. A year later, Hamburger SV purchased the player for e3.8 million, and made a
profit of e700,000 the following season when Sanogo was sold to SV Werder Bremen.
Finally, Sanogo has been transferred during the summer 2009 transfer window to AS
Saint-Etienne for an estimated fee of e5 million.
The Nigerian forward John Utaka also came to Europe via the Persian Gulf. At 16
years of age he was first transferred from Enugu Rangers to the Egyptian club Arab
Contracters, and then on to Ismaily SC. After three years in Egypt, he left for Al Sadd
Doha. He stayed for one year in Qatar before being signed by RC Lens for around two
million euro. This sum was multiplied by a factor of three two seasons later when the
player was recruited by Stade Rennais. After two seasons, the Breton club made a financial
gain by transferring him to the English club Portsmouth FC for around e10 million.
Examples of career paths fragmented between a multitude of countries are more and
more frequent. During the first semester of the 2009/10 season, 11 of the 151 African
players (7.3%) under contract to clubs of the five principle European leagues (England,
Germany, Spain, France and Italy) transited through one or more Asian countries during
their career (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Thailand, China, Lebanon).
Generally speaking, only 13.9% of players who grew up in Africa have been directly
recruited by clubs of the big-five league countries, and only 10.6% have been directly
engaged by clubs participating in the top-division leagues of these countries.12 In all the
other cases, the players have transited via intermediary countries or have been first
recruited by clubs in lower divisions, in the countries in which the best leagues of the
world are located.
These statistics show that most of the African footballers have to pass through multiple
championships with different sporting and economic levels before being able to reach the
wealthiest leagues and clubs. The analytical framework of global commodity chains13 is
particularly useful in understanding what is at stake in the global market of footballers.
From this perspective, clubs can be considered as industries gradually developing
footballers’ skills and players as commodities whose transfer rights are bought and sold in
 Sport in Society 1005

order to generate added values.14 On one hand, this highly speculative system allows for
some players to become global stars, such as in the case of Didier Drogba, but on the other,
it obviously implies very high risks of failure.

African footballers in Europe

Europe remains the preferred destination for African footballers, not only regarding
earning potential, but also, and perhaps most importantly, because of the symbolic
attraction held by clubs from this continent. The study carried out in September and
October 2008 in 30 premier league championships of UEFA member countries recorded
531 players recruited in Africa. African migrants ‘with the ball’ made up 13.5% of the
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total number of expatriate players. Among non-Europeans expatriates, only Latin

American footballers were more numerous (979 players, 25.0%). Brazil was represented
by 551 footballers (Figure 2).
An expatriate footballer plays outside the country in which he grew up, from where he
departed following recruitment by a foreign club. This definition is at the heart of the work
carried out by the Professional Football Players Observatory (PFPO). It only permits
international flows directly linked to football to be taken into consideration.
The African countries exporting the most players are all situated in the western part of
the continent. Nigeria and Cameroon alone account for a third of the flow of footballers to
Europe. This proportion increases to 62% if we take into account the other three main
exporting countries: Ivory Coast, Senegal and Ghana (Table 1). In 2003, the percentage of
footballers coming from the top five exporting nations was 54%. This shows that despite a
trend towards globalization, transfer networks still focus on specific countries, where
trans-national social links have been developed over time.
The highest concentration of African footballers per club was recorded in France and
in Belgium. This result confirms the importance of the continuity of bonds inherited from

Figure 2. Country of origin of expatriate players in 30 European leagues (October 2008).

 1006 R. Poli

Table 1. Country of origin of African players expatriated in Europe (October 2008).

Number of players Percentage Combined percentage

Nigeria 94 17.7 17.7
Cameroon 87 16.4 34.1
Ivory Coast 59 11.1 45.2
Senegal 45 8.5 53.7
Ghana 44 8.3 62.0
South Africa 19 3.6 65.6
Morocco 18 3.4 69.0
Mali 18 3.4 72.4
Tunisia 16 3.0 75.0
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Guinea 12 2.3 77.3

Burkina Faso 10 1.9 79.2
DR of Congo 10 1.9 81.1
Sierra Leone 10 1.9 83.0
Others 89 17.0 100.0
Total 531 100.0

the history of territories in the geographical configuration of flows, even within the context
of globalization.15 However, migratory channels taken by African players lead them to
almost all European countries. Among the 30 countries taken into account in the study,
only Iceland did not host any migrants ‘with the ball’ recruited in Africa (Table 2).
Compared to 2003, the number of African footballers has increased particularly in
Romania (þ 20), Norway (þ 16), Finland (þ 14) and England (þ 9), while it has slightly
decreased in France and, to a greater extent, in Belgium.
In the latter country, scandals about human trafficking have pushed the authorities to
introduce a minimum wage for footballers coming from non-EU countries,16 which has
had the effect of rendering their recruitment less profitable. The same policy had been
previously introduced in the Netherlands.
Table 3 confirms the emerging trend towards a diversification of migration networks.
As well as France and Belgium, numerous Northern and Eastern European countries
feature among those with a higher than average percentage of Africans players among
expatriates.

Table 2. Number of African players in Europe per club (October 2008).

Number of clubs Number of players recruited in Africa Number per club
France 20 61 3.1
Belgium 18 52 2.9
Switzerland 10 25 2.5
Turkey 18 30 1.7
England 20 33 1.7
Finland 14 23 1.6
Norway 14 23 1.6
Romania 18 28 1.6
Sweden 16 24 1.5
Denmark 12 17 1.4
Germany 18 23 1.3
Ukraine 16 20 1.3
General average 456 531 1.2
Others 262 241 0.9
 Sport in Society 1007

Table 3. Percentage of African players among expatriates (October 2008).

% of Africans among expatriates

France 37.0%
Finland 35.9%
Belgium 25.1%
Serbia 24.4%
Sweden 23.5%
Switzerland 21.7%
Norway 18.9%
Denmark 18.3%
Hungary 17.9%
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Turkey 17.5%
Romania 17.3%
Ukraine 14.3%
General average 13.5%

If we take into account the hierarchy of leagues on three different levels based upon
their classification in the UEFA ranking, one may notice that the proportion among
expatriates diminishes, as the level of clubs decreases, for Western European and Latin
American players, while it increases for African and Eastern European footballers. As they
are very small in number, players from other parts of the world have not been taken into
account. In the case of Eastern European players, it must be noted that most of the
championships ranked in the third level are to be found in the eastern part of the continent,
which goes to explain the over-concentration in this league category recorded for players
of this origin.
The result recorded in the case of Africans indicates that they are relatively more
concentrated in middle-ranking or weaker teams (Table 4). In so far as the sporting
hierarchy reflects, for the most part, an economic one, we can say that footballers recruited
in Africa tend not to be as well integrated in the European football players’ labour market
than their colleagues from other origins. This situation can be linked to the more feeble
development of sub-Saharan professional football, which leads to departure abroad at a
younger age. During the 2007/08 season, African footballers playing in the five top
European leagues left their country at 18.8 years of age on average, which is around three
years younger than for South American, Western European and Eastern European
players.17 From an economic point of view, the consequences are measured in terms of
lower transfer fees paid to clubs and lower remuneration for players.18
A former Cameroonian footballer, Augustine Simo, explains that Africans tend to
‘accept conditions that European footballers would not accept. We are obliged to accept
certain conditions to be able to play. There are a lot of agents and clubs who know
very well how to take advantage from African players and are able to impose their

Table 4. Distribution of expatriates by origin and by level (October 2008).

Latin Western Eastern

Africa America Europe Europe Total
Level 1 (places 1 – 5 in the UEFA ranking) 13.7 32.3 37.1 16.8 100
Level 2 (places 6 – 19) 14.0 27.5 30.4 28.2 100
Level 3 (places 20 – 37) 14.7 12.1 26.8 46.4 100
 1008 R. Poli

conditions’.19 This statement and many other similar ones collected by the author, show
how inequalities in the global economy are concretely translated by actors within transfer
networks and influence their empirical functioning.

Conclusion
The geography of the international flow of African footballers is structured around
networks set up by recruiters from clubs and players’ agents. These ‘transfer networks’
assume the function of migratory channels.20 Thanks to the expanding spatial field of
action of scouts and agents, the trans-nationalisation21 of career paths is at the heart of the
process of globalization of the football players’ labour market and also of the functional
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integration22 of championships. The international flow of African players thus brings to

light the different functions of leagues in a globalized market.
With a view to professional mobility in mind, clubs can play the role of stepping stone
when they allow footballers to reach higher level teams, one of stagnation when the new
club is not noticeably better than the previous one, or one of demotion when the team or
player is weaker. The pyramid structure of professional football, where the number of
clubs having considerable means at their disposal is relatively small compared to that
of less well-off teams, means that functions of stagnation and demotion are more
commonplace than those of launching pad. Ascending career paths are thus more of an
exception than a rule.
For players, migratory channels are both an opportunity and a constraint. On one hand,
they allow for the necessary documents to be obtained to be able to take their chances
abroad. On the other, they tend to reduce their room for manoeuvre by imposing
conditions on transfer and travel which are often unfavourable and from which only the
most successful players manage to extricate themselves.23 Only 15% of the 338 under-28
years-of-age African players under contract to clubs of 14 professional European
championships during the 2002/03 season24 played in higher ranked clubs four seasons
later. About 37% were playing in clubs of a similar level. In 58% of cases, footballers
played in weaker teams. Half of these had even disappeared from the professional football
circuit. By comparison, during the same period, the exit level of expatriate players having
other origins was 13%.25
However, observations on the field suggest that the uncertainty linked to the pursuit of
a professional career in football does not temper the desire of numerous young Africans to
attain this goal. Despite the relatively small number of persons concerned, the profession
enjoys huge media coverage and over the years has acquired a very strong symbolic value.
The hosting of the World Cup 2010 in South Africa is part of a larger process of the
mythification of football as a means of social ascension for African youth.
Although existing on a world-wide level, the myth of success through football is
particularly devastating in sub-Saharan Africa, where the profession is almost non-existent
and the possibilities of a dual career are practically impossible. The few examples of
upward career paths mask the many cases of failure and are sufficient to convince young
people and their families that it is worth giving oneself body and soul to football, often to
the detriment of school training or an apprenticeship. The phenomenon is particularly
prevalent in countries that export the greatest number of players, such as Nigeria,
Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Senegal.
Training structures are set up in the important towns in these countries by local
promoters in the hope of making money by transferring young players abroad.26 The
setting up of these structures does much more than just cater for a social need, it also
 Sport in Society 1009

actively reinforces it. The media also play a part in this process in glorifying the success of
expatriates by elevating them to an iconic level.
For young African footballers, migration through this profession means considerably
more than just a means to become rich. In a context where, either in the media or at the
level of national team selection, expatriate players are systematically preferred over local
ones, the departure abroad is a sine qua non condition for the acquisition of real peer
recognition and the possibility of becoming a national hero. The conjunction of economic
and sociological criteria push many youths towards a professional football career and to
consider migration in the pursuit of this profession as the ultimate and often the unique
means of social ascension. The huge hopes placed in football are unfortunately not
realistic when compared to the real chances of promotion offered by the game.
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One must avoid, however, judging this phenomenon in an ethnocentric manner.

A Cameroonian player who was staying illegally in France and who had managed to
obtain a permit through marriage told the present writer, that despite the failure of his
sporting career, he considered himself to have succeeded in life ‘thanks to football’. This
for the simple reason that he could come to Europe and stay there. This statement reflects
the fact that independent of the real possibilities of professional career and upward social
mobility that it offers, football tends to be seen by the African male youth as a means to go
abroad and to escape the difficult life conditions experienced at home. Darby and Solberg
also highlight this aspect:
The fact that Ghanaian football players are prepared to travel so widely to countries such as
India, Thailand or Vietnam in search of contracts, reveals the strength of the “push” factors
that encourage them to leave Ghana. Quite clearly, the key motivation is to escape a football
and social context that provides little in the way of opportunities for financial reward.27
Bearing this in mind, the question of the alternatives to football offered by the country
of departure must be taken into account for an objective and pertinent analysis.
Nevertheless, for any young person, irrespective of their origin, our analysis suggests that
it is foolhardy to consider football as the only means of professional integration and social
success. As we have noted, this has become frequent in many exporting sub-Saharan
countries.

Notes
1
For more details on this issue see Poli, ‘Migrations and trade’.
2
This concept was first put forward by Lanfranchi and Taylor, Moving with the Ball.
3
Manzo, ‘Icons of Hope’.
4
Takou, ‘La figure du footballeur’; and Künzler, ‘Didier Drogba’.
5
For more information on the problems of speculation and wage dumping, see Poli, ‘Africans’
Status’.
6
Besson, Poli and Ravenel, Demographic Study.
7
Mukharji, ‘“Feeble Bengalis”’.
8
See http://www.onanafootball.com.
9
More information on http://www.aspire.qa/ (page consulted on the 23rd April 2009).
10
In view of this situation, FIFA has tightened its regulation on the eligibility of naturalized players,
who from now on must wait five years after having celebrated their eighteenth birthday before
representing their new country. Young Africans aged 13 recruited by the Aspire Academy must
therefore wait until they are 23 years old before becoming eligible for the Qatari national team.
11
The transfer fees quoted are for the most part taken from the www.transfermarkt.de website.
12
These data are taken from the Professional Football Players Observatory (PFPO), a research
group of the International Centre for Sports Study of the University of Neuchâtel and the Centre
of Sports Research of the University of Franche-Comté. More information is available at www.
eurofootplayers.org.
 1010 R. Poli
13
See notably Gereffi and Korzeniewicz, Commodity Chains; Dicken, Global Shift; and Dicken
et al., ‘Chains and networks’.
14
This framework has been developed by Poli ‘Le marché des footballeurs’.
15
This issue has been notably raised by McGovern, ‘Globalization or Internationalization’; Maguire
and Stead, ‘Border Crossings’; and Poli and Ravenel, ‘Les frontières’.
16
See Dedecker and Lozie, Traite des êtres humains dans le sport.
17
This figure comes from Poli and Ravenel, Annual Review.
18
For more details on this issue see Poli, ‘Les footballeurs africains en Suisse’.
19
Face-to-face interview, Zurich, 25 August 2003.
20
This concept comes from Findlay and Li, ‘Migration Channels’.
21
For the concept of trans-nationalism see Vertovec, ‘Conceiving and researching Transnation-
alism’ and Vertovec, ‘Migration’.
22
The concept of functional integration of spaces comes from Dicken, Global Shift.
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23
For a biographic approach to Cameroonian and Senegalese footballers’ migrations see Poli,
Les migrations internationales des footballeurs.
24
The leagues taken into account are the top level of national competition of the Italian, Spanish,
English, French, German, Russian, Turkish, Austrian, Swiss, Dutch, Belgian, Portuguese, Greek
and Scottish championships. For the Russian championship, which is disputed during the same
civic year, we have taken into account the 2003 season.
25
For more data on this issue see Poli, Le marché des footballeurs.
26
For the example of Ivory Coast see Poli, Le football en Côte d’Ivoire. For the case of Ghana see
Darby, Akindes and Kirwin, ‘Football Academies’.
27
See Darby and Solberg, ‘Differing trajectories’.

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