Hi all,
While in the process of fundraising for my work in Johannesburg I took a moment to reflect upon some of the reasons why I chose to apply for the GRS internship in the first place. While studying abroad in Morocco back in 2010 I conducted research on sub-Saharan football players. Hearing the fascinating stories of some players who found themselves in Morocco, whether by choice or by circumstance, was very helpful in allowing me to understand how soccer presented itself to different people worldwide, whether for better or worse. Needless to say, I saw that GRS is an exemplary model for using soccer as a tool for long-term sustainable community development and I wanted to be a part of it!
Below is the term paper I wrote that semester titled, "Chasing the Dream: Globalization and its role on Sub-Saharan Football Migration". While reading, I'd like for you to consider how soccer can be used to both promote, and impede, sustainable community development.
Let me know what you think!
Karl
Chasing the Dream:
Globalization and its
Role on Sub-Saharan Football Migration
Karl Alexander
SIT Morocco: Migration and Transnational Identity
Fall Semester, 2010
“Football isn’t a matter of life and death. It’s much more important
than that.”
-
Liverpool
Legend Bill Shankley (Willis 2004)
Preface:
I began
playing football when I was four years old. I can distinctly remember running
around a chewed up grass pitch in my oversized youth football t-shirt, trying
to pick up the ball with my hands and then kick it in the wrong direction. What
began as an intramural sport for me quickly developed into a passion; a love
for the game that has resonated into a life-long relationship. From concrete
schoolyards to university pitches I have always taken advantage of the
opportunities I had to play football, even if only for a game of ‘pick-up’. My
football career has taken me from training in the dead heat of summer to
down-to-the-wire championship matches on snow-covered pitches in the end of
November. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, football has often been a
part of it.
And then
this semester came. A time in my life where I had to choose between playing the
game I love for my college or to travel abroad to enhance my education. In the
end, I chose to study abroad. Needless to say that part of me, that desperate
love for the game I’ve always had, died a little bit when I told my coach and
teammates I would not be joining them on the field that season. For the first fall
since 1994, I did not have a football at my feet.
And then I
came to Africa, Morocco to be precise, and its football-crazy streets, beaches,
pitches and people. In coming to Africa, the part of me that disappeared when I
left the ‘beautiful game’ back in August immediately came rushing back into my
life, but in a different way. No more would I be playing the game constantly,
attending practices every day in the heat or cold, hanging out with my
teammates or representing the ‘Bobcats’ of Bates College. Instead, I found
myself submerged in a football culture, a place where the people literally ate,
breathed and lived football. I was immediately intrigued and inspired. In my 16
years of playing the game I had never seen football so important, so
interplayed into a society that it literally became a life-changing game.
And then it hit me. I knew that all my years
of playing football had to transfer to something more than just faded memories.
Being in Morocco inspired my transition of the physical game of football to the
mental: to understand the mind behind the muscle. To turn my love for the game
into an understanding of the game, how it works and is a functioning part of
greater society. Being in Africa, the continent of football, I couldn’t find a
better place to start. What I have encountered during the studies and research
of football while living in Morocco over the past four months has changed
forever my view on sports and their impact on the world around us. Being the
same kid as the one in that oversized jersey sixteen years ago, I finally feel
like I’m kicking the ball in the right direction.
Abstract:
Over
the past quarter century, the Age of Globalization has introduced vast social
changes within the African continent, particularly in the sphere of football.
Through media growth, commercialization and player commoditization,
globalization has had a profound impact on how football is perceived in Africa.
With the constant increase of football academies and international superstars
particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, football is quickly being seen as a
feasible and easy-to-achieve vocation as opposed to being a specialized
vocation only a few privileged people get to do for a financial income. The
breakdown of international spaces through new media technologies and increasing
migratory networks has led to the increase in African footballers emigrating in
hopes of making a living playing “the beautiful game”. Using research and case
studies of Sub-Saharan footballers in Morocco as primary examples, this paper
discusses that while on the outside football shines and is portrayed throughout
African media as the pride and joy of nations, the inside business of the game-
the exploitation, commoditization and migration of players- shows
globalization’s true role in shaping the lives of thousands who see football as
their shining beacon in the search for a more stable life.
Introduction:
In Africa,
more so than in Europe, South America or any other place on this planet,
football encompasses the essence of the continent. The politics, the culture,
the economy and the people are so interwoven into football that it is steadily
becoming, quite literally, a matter of life and death for people. But then
again, football in Africa has even developed to become much more than that. In
Africa, football has been a key player in its political and cultural makeup
throughout its history. Brought by French, English, Belgian and Portuguese
colonials, football quickly gained popularity amongst the black African
population while white colonials preferred to play cricket and rugby. From
Nelson Mandela’s democratic organization of football leagues while imprisoned
on Robben Island as a model for South African political strategy under
Apartheid to the ceasefire of civil war in the Cote D’Ivoire after they
qualified for the 2006 world cup, football has long and often stood as a symbol
for political and social action in Africa.
Over the past
25 years, the now quite fittingly deemed “Age of Globalization” has changed the
role of football in Africa in ways no one could have ever imagined. Beginning
in the 1980’s, football in Africa began to enter a new phase which, powered by
the increased connectivity of the globalized world, has been characterized by
the commercialization of African footballers as a growing, and prospering,
talent resource for European football clubs and organizations (Poli 2006). What
was once a beautiful game based on pride and talent in Africa is now becoming a
business of global networks, scouts, football academies and players all trying
to make a profit rather than preserving the rich tradition of the ‘beautiful
game’. While many footballers use the statement that they “eat, breathe and
live football” as a figure of speech, the scene of African football in the Age
of Globalization has made this phrase quite literal. In the past two decades,
Sub-Saharan African footballers, primarily from West Africa, have been affected
immensely by the globalized notion of football. Finding influences at home and
abroad, Sub-Saharan footballers have increasingly decided to emigrate from
their countries of origin, legally and illegally, in their search for work as
professional players.
This paper
contends that globalization and all of its encompassed entities- media
expansion, commercialization, glocalization, commoditization and the expansion
of cultural and social networks- have been the driving forces in the creation
and popularization of professional footballing in Sub-Saharan Africa and the
subsequent international migration that stems from it. This paper, using a case
study of illegal Sub-Saharan football migrants in Morocco accompanied by
additional research on the subject, attempts to address the social, political,
cultural and economic effects of globalization on the lives and migratory
patterns of Sub-Saharan footballers in the search for a better, more stable
life.
African Football in the “Age of Globalization”
Over the
past quarter century, there has been only one consistent and universal
commonality which has remained a beacon of pride and aspiration for the African
continent: football. In Africa, outside the sphere of corruption and
illegitimate dealings which has plagued the region, football has been a source
of fame and glory for which millions of people have aspired to play as a way to
better their financial and social circumstances (BBC 2010). The “Age of
Globalization” has been a key factor in the increase of football’s global reach
both as a game and as a cultural and economic entity. In his analysis of the
impact of globalization on football, Richard Giulianotti contends that modern
football has not only been impacted by globalization but has in fact has been a
manifestation of it, intertwined with the ebb and flow of global politics,
culture and economics (Giulianotti and Robertson 2004). In the past 25 years,
the development of far reaching social spaces through media, internet and
migrant networks has introduced, as Paul Ugor discusses in his analysis of the
impact of new media spaces in Nigerian and African youth, a “shifting cultural
milieu of ideas, events, appearances and meanings” that has spawned a desire
for greater international and global interaction in African communities (Ugor
2009).
This global
interaction which Ugor discusses, however, has not arisen out of a world-wide
cohesive mentality but has been characterized by a global willingness to
increase connectivity amongst one another (Giulianotti and Robertson 2004).
While globalization has principally allowed for the ease with which the process
of goods, capital, services, information and ideas flow across international
borders, it has not done so without an imbalance of power and capital inequity
(GCIM 2005). The theory of developed
under-development, conceived by economist Andre Gunder Frank in 1969, has
been particularly precise in pinpointing the relationship between Africa and
Globalization, not just in basic political economic theory but within the
sphere of football as well. As stated by Paul Darby et al in his analysis of
African sport labor migration, Andre Gunder Frank contends that “core,
industrialized Western nations dominate the global capitalist system largely by
dictating the terms upon which world trade is conducted. As a consequence, they
develop and prosper through the under-development of those on the periphery of
the global economy” (Darby et all 2007).
In his
breakdown of Frank’s developed
under-development, Darby et al continues to highlight the encapsulation of
this theory on the nature of African football and its colonial relationship to
European football. He points out that European football clubs and
organizations, vastly economically stronger than their financially precarious
African counterparts, have emerged in the Age of Globalization as the dictators
of how football players are developed and utilized in Africa (Darby et all
2007). Essentially, under the direction of European football, African football
in the past 25 years has developed into a globalized network of commercialization
and commoditization (Cornelissen and Solberg 2007). With such a corporatization
of the sport and the rise of internationally idolized celebrities and club
teams in contemporary Africa, there has been a heavy demise of the notion of
football as a local game for friendly interaction and competition (Armstrong
2007).
The heavy
emergence of football academies in Sub-Saharan Africa since the 1990’s has been
no exception to this neo-colonial economic dominance and has continued to rob
the essence of football as a “local game”. This practice of a less-than-just
neo-colonial system has gained the attention of world footballs highest
governing body, the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA)
and its commissioner Joseph “Sepp” Blatter. In December of 2003, Blatter
criticized the neo-colonial practices of European football clubs and
organizations, labeling them as “neo-colonialists who don’t give a damn about
heritage and culture, but engage in social and economic rape by robbing the
developing world of its best players” and described their recruitment of young
African players as “unhealthy if not despicable” (Darby et all 2007). Despite
criticism from the highest governing bodies, little, if any, has been done to
curb the European exploitation of African football in the Age of Globalization.
With the diminishment
over the past 25 years of football as a “local game”, African footballers have
more frequently adapted towards a global spectrum of the game, becoming essentially
export products of their nations in the search to play football abroad with
Europe in particular (Andrews and Ritzer 2007; Poli 2006). In terms of labor migration
as a whole, the process of modern globalization has increasingly allowed migrants
to develop and carry out their ambitions of travelling abroad (GCIM 2006). From
1980 to 2000, the number of legal international migrants worldwide has risen
from 48 to 118 million and the number of African football players in Europe
doubled from 463 in 1995 to 998 in 2006 (GCIM 2006; Poli 2006). Following the
northbound trend of labor migration, an estimated 500,000 undocumented migrants
arrive in Europe each year (GCIM 2006).
Not an
exception to illegitimate migration, thousands of footballers, unsuccessful in
their previous attempts to make it to Europe legally, have turned to migrant
networks and fake scouts in order to chase their dreams of playing
professionally. While in transit to Europe, many illegal football migrants have
found themselves in Morocco due to its close proximity to Europe and geographic
(and football) centrality between Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. In my
discussions with three undocumented sub-Saharan footballers in Morocco- Nani
from Ghana, Ibrahim from Guinea and Youssef from Mali- all three stated that
they were on their way to Europe in hopes of becoming professional footballers
despite their connection to any sort of professional club or agency. Nani,
Ibrahim and Youssef play for an amateur team called “Future Hope” based out of
Youssofia, a lower income area of Rabat. Despite playing for “Future Hope”, a
team comprised of both Moroccans and Sub-Saharans, for 500 Moroccan Dirham
(roughly $50 USD) a month, Nani, Ibrahim and Youssef have no connections within
the Moroccan footballing scene from which they can try and display their
talents. How then, with so little physical connections and relationships within
Morocco or any other host country, do football migrants manage to maintain
their dream of professional stardom?
Carrying out
these ambitions of international football migration, football migrants in
Africa have played into the globalized notion of, what Richard Giulianotti
likes to call, “self-invented virtual spaces”.
Not existing before the globalization of international communication, self-invented virtual spaces are the
creations of football (and all labor) migrants, incorporating all their
theoretical and long distant relations to develop their own connective web that
reaches far beyond that of their original local communities. For example, Nani,
a Ghanaian migrant footballer who lives in Morocco, is a supporter of the
London football Club Chelsea, has played
in football academies in Liberia and Nigeria as well as Ghana, has two hundred
Facebook and Myspace friends from all over the world, listens to American pop
music and emails friends back home in Ghana using Yahoo. Under the sphere of
globalization and modern communication and media services, Nani has done an
excellent job of self-inventing his
own virtual space, a world which is
unique to his own life and no one else.
Recently,
new innovations in globalized technology has made it even easier for football
(and all labor) migrants to avoid assimilation into their host culture as they
can easily bring their home culture along with them. As Ian Yeboah likes to put
it in his analysis of African football and brain drain, “the transnational
nature of today’s globalized labor market [has allowed] emigrants [to] no
longer cut ties with their place of origin but literally live with one leg in
their origin and the other in their destination” (Yeboah 2005). What this new
social, and very much virtual, dynamic of migrant living has done however,
especially for migrant footballers, has been to place them in an area of
constant cultural and living instability. For football migrants, the modern and
globalized football world has introduced to them uncertain vocational
availability and a constant forced renewal of living situations (Tiesler and
Coelho 2007). For Nani, Ibrahim and Youssef, their inability to communicate
with and be accepted by local Moroccans has prevented them from making money
outside their careers as footballers (20 dirham [$2 USD] per day) and, in
Nani’s case, has forced him to beg on the street for an additional income. As
is the case with Nani, Ibrahim and Youssef, the football migrant in motion has
essentially become a victim to and subject of the globalized world with no
other options to turn to.
Football in Africa: “A Way Out”
Adhering to
the supply and demand of world football, the migration of African footballers
began in the 1980’s after the emergence and showcasing of the continent’s
talent in international competitions (Darby et all 2007). Realizing the
potential for Africa to be a source of cheap talent, European football clubs
began to claim their stake in the African game, founding football academies,
commercializing football products and even sponsoring African club teams in
order to take financial advantage of the continent’s football (Cornelissen and
Solberg 2007). Over the next two decades, the high economic emphasis of
football in Africa by European TNC’s (Trans-National Clubs/Corporations [i.e.
Manchester United, Ajax Amsterdam, etc.]) gave rise to the now one of the most,
if not the most, aspired career path on the continent: professional footballer
(Poli 2006).
Throughout
its history, football was meant to a sport that crossed economics boundaries.
Regardless of how much money a person had they could always manage to make a
ball and two goals, even if from just rubble and trash, and still have a great
time playing the “beautiful game”. While this has remained true to an extent,
the interference of globalization and the gradual corporate takeover of the
African game have impeded football’s ability to be a leisure sport for many
people. While still encompassing the resilience, power, and compassion that
comes with the game, football in Africa has slowly been transformed in the social
sphere as something that can be played as a normal, not specialized, profession
(Evers 2010 and Willis 2004). Numerous factors go into the reason why more and
more people are turning to sport as a full time vocation. The pride, wealth and
glory which one receives as a professional footballer, however, is a good place
to start.
One of the
greatest reasons behind the pursuit of a career in professional football is the
hopes of receiving a great windfall of wealth that can then be used as
remittance money. Especially true for international labor migrants, including
footballers, remittances received and redistributed within their home
communities provide one of the key financial incomes for the developing world
(GCIM 2005). For the thousand or so African players playing in Europe,
returning their vast wealth to their original communities has been a top
priority, extending throughout their family circles and beyond (Darby et all
2007). This notion of successful remittances, however, has succeeded in
romanticizing and over-emphasizing the idea of making it big in European
football for African footballers and their families. The popularity of
professional footballing in Africa has caused people to develop and chase their
dreams of sporting stardom, leading them to think globally instead of acting
locally for economic stability (Andrews and Ritzer 2007). For Nani from Ghana,
he and his two brothers, one a professional musician and one a commercial
entrepreneur, decided to look internationally for a financial income despite
now realizing, as Nani detailed, the opportunities for vocational work were
more available back home in Accra.
The notion
of using professional footballing to solve local financial struggles in
Sub-Saharan Africa can be best placed under the theory of what Richard
Giullianotti, Roland Robertson and other social sport analysts like to call “glocalization”. Originally conceived by
Japanese businessmen in the early 1990’s, the theory of glocalization contests that citizens of the developing world, not
fully able to participate in all of the aspects which comprise globalization
and the globalized world, will adapt globalization to their own lives,
adjusting “global cultural products to suit their particular local needs,
beliefs and customs” (Giulianotti and Robertson 2004). In describing how
football in Africa has been shaped by global influences in the past quarter
century, glocalization seems to fit the description quite well.
What has
been seen in African football over the past 25 years has been the distinct shift
of football as a ‘local’ game to a ‘global’ game. While African leagues and
competitions before the 1980s seldom spread further than regional or national boundaries,
African players now aspire to play professionally worldwide from New England to
Japan. No longer do footballers in Africa want to play for the glory of their
local team, city or village. Instead, African footballers acquire visions of
playing for Chelsea and Manchester United, only returning home to play for
their national team on the world stage. In the age of globalized thinking in
African football, the local is quickly disappearing and falling victim to the
ideology of the glocal (Andrews and
Ritzer 2007; Giulianotti and Robertson 2004). Nani’s circumstances fit strongly
into the idea of the glocal, as his
dream to play for Chelsea or any European club outshines brightly, in his eyes,
the fact that he made the equivalent of 1,200 US dollars/month at home for a
well respected local club in Accra.
The glocalization of African football has
indeed been brought on by an onslaught of football commercialization in the
region over the past quarter century, with new media and product influences
providing global football imagery on a daily basis from which African players
can base their notion of fame and success (Andrews and Ritzer 2007). This new
relationship between the sporting global and sporting local, which we now can
call the sporting glocal, has helped
foster the connection between the universal
and the particular cultural
dimensions of African football in the age of globalization. In modern African
football, the universal has been the
phenomena of the European game and its financial stake in the African
counterpart. In glocalization terms,
this is the global element of the
football world which has made its mark in the local African game. The particular
in modern African football has been the reaction of African youth and footballers
to new universal ideals of the global game. In glocalization terms, this is the local element of African football which has reacted to the corporate
influences of European football as the commercialization of the sport has taken
full force (Giulianotti and Robertson 2004; Andrews and Ritzer 2007).
Football Media and Superstars: The Corporate Influences of
Football Migration in Africa
A key factor in what has come to
define football in Africa over the past quarter century has been the drastic
increase in the commoditization and glorification of the game through the
international media. The first, and perhaps greatest, shift in how football
media was viewed worldwide came with the increased international broadcasting
of matches and sports news through satellite television. Beginning in the
1980s, what once could only be seen in football stadiums and local matches
could now be seen from the comfort of a home television set via a satellite
dish (Tiesler and Coelho 2007). From the late 1980s onwards, the proliferation
of African radio and satellite televisions stations emerged largely through the
liberalization of African media content which began to gain the rights to
football broadcast and analysis. An example of this can be seen in the mid
2000s, when the British-based GTV, as Richard Vokes describes in his article on
football media in Uganda, “began to expand aggressively into Africa, with a
business model that included a US $200 Million investment into the continent-
the biggest ever single investment in African media…The combined result was
that within barely a year of its creation, GTV already had over 100,000
subscribers across more than 20 African countries” (Vokes 2010).
New media structures in Africa, as
with the rest of the world, have provided a way to interact, communicate and
experience other cultures and societies. For football in Africa, media
availability has made it possible to support any team at any point in time,
diffusing local alliances and allowing different nations and populaces around
the continent to support the same club team at the click of a remote button
(Andrews and Ritzer 2007). New media technologies have fostered the creation of
new cultural landscapes in Africa which no longer are limited to the continent.
New cultural micro territories and allegiances have been created as major
European clubs have stamped their presence on African football media. As David
Morley and Kevin Robins put it in their analysis of Nigerian media spaces,
“There are those who desire to ‘re-territorialize’ the media, that is, to
re-establish a relationship between media and territory [with] economic and
entrepreneurial imperatives” (Ugor 2009).
As recent as fifteen or even ten
years ago, one could travel to most places in Africa and find no commercialized
evidence of European football. No jerseys, no television broadcasts, no posters
of idolized teams and players, nothing. In his travels to the small village of
Bugamba in rural Uganda over the past decade, Anthropologist Richard Vokes
noticed the surprising development and devotion of fandom in the village for
Arsenal, one of the top football teams in the English Premier League, simply
from the introduction of British Satellite television into the community three
years ago. As noted while making his most recent visit to Bugamba, Vokes was
unable to go anywhere in the village without witnessing a young Bugamban in an
Arsenal jersey or seeing a wall in a house that was not covered in posters of
the “Gunners” superstar players, many of whom are of African descent. On
Arsenal’s match days, Vokes noted that Bugamba turns into a ghost town as the
entire village fills crowded viewing halls to watch their favorite team play
all the way in England via satellite (Vokes 2010). With such a sharp shift in
interests over the past few years, what has been the impact of the increased
popularity of the international game in Africa as the local game increasingly
ceases to exist (Willis 2004)?
Vokes continues to note in his work
that the introduction of international football media in Bugamba has sparked a
sense of international curiosity throughout the village. This curiosity, Vokes
details, has been derived from several factors surrounding the viewing of
international football in Bugamba, including particularly the wealth of
international players and fans in the game:
“More
generally, I also got a sense during this trip that people were more aware than
ever before that I am from the UK specifically…and the fact that I was born a
short distance from the Arsenal stadium elicited even greater interest of
course…The changes which have been brought by the new interest in EPL football
are not only conceptual in nature: the new fandom has also altered the flow of
existing social practices and relations” (Vokes 2010).
Now more than ever new media spaces have given African
footballers an international vision of the game (Ugor 2009). Seeing only the
top players and matches on television provides African footballers with an
“illusion of facility”, the notion that making it as a professional footballer
is an easily obtainable and incredibly rewarding vocational option that can be
achieved by anyone (Poli 2006).
For
the African footballer, the “illusion of
facility” has most uniquely been created by, what Paul Ugor likes to say, “The
radicalization of both local and international experiences of territory…
especially in the realms of transportation and communication” (Ugor 2009). Now
confronted with the cultural and social norms of international territorial
spaces through media, the radicalization of media spaces in Africa has broken
down the restriction of physical spaces, especially for migrants (Ugor 2009). For
African football migrants in particular, the proliferation of internationally
mediated sporting events and televisual consumption has indeed led to the
popularity of emigrating for vocational purposes (Tiesler and Coelho 2007).
Rafaele Poli discusses the impact of football media on African football
emigration, stating that “It is undeniable that football and its promulgation through
the mass media have contributed to the increase in African youth of the desire
to succeed through emigration” and that an increase in football “publicity
contributes to perpetuating the naivety of millions of young African adolescent
by promoting football through rose tinted glass” (Poli 2006). Like thousands of
others who have attempted to do so, Nani, Ibrahim and Youssef all believed
through an illusion of facility that
once they made their way north finding a professional club to play for would be
easy. Wanting to leave their precarious socioeconomic situations in Morocco,
the fact none of them have made it to their intended destination of Europe yet
still see the glorified imagery of the European game has only perpetuated their
glorified vision of being signed by a European club that much more enticing.
While
the different impacts of football media on aspiring African footballers are
numerous, the largest has been its representation of African football
superstars as iconic legends and national heroes to look up to. For decades the
footballing world has turned to the creation of football celebrities (i.e.
David Beckham or Ronaldinho) in order to commercialize the game of football
through merchandising and taking advantage of the player’s idol status (Cornelissen
and Solberg 2007). For African football celebrities, the meaning of player
commoditization takes on a new, and much more powerful, form. Seen as locally
grown superstars, international football celebrities in Africa such as Cote
D’Ivoire ’s Didier Drogba, Ghana and Chelsea’s Michael Essien or Togo and
Manchester City’s Emmanuel Adebayor are prime examples of the success, fame and
fortune which can spur from professional footballing (Tiesler and Coelho 2007).
By only showing the success stories of only the few professional players which
have made it as footballers in Europe, the African media is portraying a
misshapen and altered image of true professional footballing in Africa (Poli
2006).
Through
his studies in Cote D’Ivoire on the migration of African footballers, Raffaele
Poli accurately depicts the extremity of how African football superstars are
used to urge the idea of football as a profession among Ivoirian youth.
“The media ignores
almost systematically, that, in comparison to the African players who attain
glory and prosperity through football, the vast majority of footballers from
the continent who attempt their chances in Europe fail and [subsequently] find
themselves often in precarious situations. By only concentrating on the success
stories, the media feed the illusion of an easy way, which is a notion shared
by many young Africans” (Poli 2006).
The idea of footballing as an easy profession, as Poli
details, is solidified through a questionnaire he conducted with the Ivorian
Under-17 national team, where 18 of the 23 players he asked said that, once in
Europe, finding a professional club to play for would be easy. Poli later asked
the team’s trainer if the possibility of being successful in Europe was a
reality for these players. In his response, the trainer said “only three or
four of them had necessary talent to break through in Europe” (Poli 2006). To
mirror Poli’s findings, while playing with Nani, Ibrahim and Youssef in Rabat,
I noticed that, despite all three’s entire lifetime’s dedication to the game, only
Ibrahim had the footballing ability to actually break through with a Moroccan
or European club. While advertisements and media sources may proclaim that a
life in professional football is easy to achieve, the actual road to achievement
proves to be much more difficult with obstacles of corruption, exploitation and
neo-colonial undertones along the way.
Neo-Colonialism and African Football:
Football Academies and the Periphery-to-Core Relationship of European and
African Football
Ask anyone
where to start as an aspiring professional footballer in West Africa and in
return you’ll only hear one answer: football academies. Over the past two
decades the emergence of academies in West Africa has drastically altered the
way football is perceived in the region, from a game once associated with pride
and passion to a game of heavy corporate and financial undertones. For the most
part, African football academies can be placed into four distinct categories:
First are African academies, which, sponsored by African clubs or national
teams, are carried out with relative similarities to European football
academies. Second are Afro-European academies which are African
feeder-academies to European “mother clubs” and almost always have neo-colonial
undertones of exploitative practices. Third are private and corporately owned
academies which are funded and fueled by private establishments keen on making
a financial gain through player commoditization. The finale type are
non-affiliated, improvised academies which are set up by under skilled and
shady “coaches” who see their players as clientele as opposed to students and
primarily seek to gain a quick profit from their scheme (Darby et all 2007).
The
number of registered football academies in West Africa ranges somewhere in the
thousands, with over 160 registered in Senegal alone and even more in larger
and more football crazy nations like Ghana, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria and
Cameroon. While advertised to parents and aspiring footballers as academies
which foster both academics and football, the education of the players is often
neglected and overshadowed by the latter as there is no financial benefit in
producing players with alternative academic experience to football (Darby et
all 2007). In Nani’s experience with academies in Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria
from the ages of 16 to 22, he never received any academic or vocational
experience outside of football. Sporting, especially as a profession, is a very
powerful mental and time-consuming activity. If you find yourself lost in a
concentrated intensity within the “beautiful game”, you can often find yourself
having little time for anything else, especially academics (Tiesler and Coelho
2007). True for almost all athletes in any sport, this is a factor which has most
certainly contributed to Nani’s inability to gain an education and in turn keep
financial stability in both Morocco and Ghana. Whether organized by an African
club, European club, a corporate sponsor or a private entrepreneur, those who
run and pump money into football academies would much rather make a financial
gain off the commoditization of five students who turn professional than to
produce 100 students who move on to a secondary education and decide to stop
playing football.
Many
NGOs and non-profit organizations have tried to counteract the massive influx
of corrupt football academies in search of financial gain, founding programs to
use football as a tool for academic and structural development. For example,
with locations in Ghana and Sierra Leone, The Craig Bellamy foundation, founded
by professional English footballer Craig Bellamy, uses football as tool to
foster teamwork and sportsmanship in combination with a full academic schedule.
If the students choose not to do their schoolwork, then they aren’t able to
play football (Craig Bellamy Foundation 2010). Another NGO, Grassroots Soccer,
focuses on HIV/AIDS prevention, using football as a tool for promoting HIV/AIDS
awareness and sexual education throughout sub-Saharan Africa (Grassroots Soccer
2010). While making a progressive and important impact within their spheres of
influence throughout Africa, the benefit of football NGOs and non-profits are
still dwarfed by the negative impact of football academies on the region.
Perhaps
the largest issue with football academies in West Africa has been their
neo-colonial ties to European football clubs. Seen as a direct investment into
acquiring African footballers as opposed to scouting in African leagues,
European-owned football academies, such as Feyenoord’s Fettah Academy in Ghana
or Ajax Amesterdam’s Ajax Cape Town in South Africa, seek to develop players
rather than students in order to prepare them for the possibility of playing in
Europe (Cornellisen 2007). Not only have these academies been blamed for
deskilling African leagues by draining the talent of African players from the
continent but have also been heavily criticized by Confederation Afrique du
Football (CAF) and FIFA for moving around international football recruitment
regulations. Amongst criticism of youth labor exploitation during the 1999s in
both Europe and Africa, in 2001 Sepp Blatter and FIFA banned the signing of
players 18 and under to professional contracts (Darby et all 2007). The
founding of football academies in Africa, however, has given European clubs a
way to foster the development of young African players, encourage
less-than-legitimate football migration, and not have to worry about the
abandonment of failed players while still in agreement with the youth labor
restrictions of FIFA.
The neo-colonial relationship which African
and European football have together can be best understood as a
periphery-to-core relationship. While media from the proliferating European
football leagues filter south and out towards the football periphery of Africa,
all of Africa’s prime football talent and resources are being filtered into the
core from the periphery (Poli 2007). This periphery-to-core relationship
between Africa and Europe, which can be traced back all the way to the slave trade,
emphasizes the south-to-north labor trade which has remained active in the
region for centuries (Cornellissen and Solberg 2007; Yeboah 2008). In this
sense, football migration from Africa to Europe, urged on heavily through
globalization and modern media, has been a continuation of the periphery
supplying raw talent and resources for the core. This relationship continues to
be incredibly unbalanced as the core continues to receive revenue through the
success of African players for both their club teams and on the international
stage while the periphery receives little of the profit, with only the scouts
and academies making financial gains for selling their players to Europe
(Cornellissen 2004). Convinced that the road to success continues to flow from
south to north and into Europe, African footballers continue to flood this
talent pipeline in order to try and reach their goal of becoming professional
players (Elliot and Maguire 2008).
Chasing the Dream: Professional
Footballers in Africa and their Reasoning to Migrate
Under
the sphere of globalization and modern media, the reasons for the increase in
aspiring footballers in Africa- media influence, increased connectivity,
football academies, etc.-
are numerous. Are they, however, reason enough to
spark such a mobile international migration among this specialized labor trade?
The answer is no. Coupled with these factors of globalization, reasoning to
migrate amongst African footballers most often comes from two distinct types of
influences: “push” factors from the
countries of origin and “pull”
factors to the countries of reception (Poli 2006). As discussed in Taieb
Belghazi’s lecture on sport migration, football migration in Africa follows
along similar migration patterns to normal labor migration which finds itself
impacted heavily by push and pull factors (Class Notes 14/9/2010).
Push factors, which arise from the
migrant’s country of origin, most often deal with leaving precarious situations
back home in search of social, political and/or economic betterment. In
Sub-Saharan Africa, almost 46% of the region’s population lives on less than $1
a day (GCIM 2005). Couple this with the countless instances of civil strife and
corrupt governing which the region has had in the post-colonial period and you
have created a socioeconomic climate ripe for emigration, both for refuge and
by choice (Darby
et all 2007; Armstrong 2007). Mirroring the political and economic climate from
where it has been produced, Sub-Saharan football leagues have always found
themselves in precarious financial and politically corrupt situations. As
Tiesler and Coelho discuss, “The economic capacity of a club/national team
determines important conditions (training and living conditions, the quality of
health care, etc.) which determine the quality of a team to a far greater
extent…How far can football be better than the society where it is played”
(Tiesler & Coelho 2007)? Professional footballing is a specialized labor
trade and, with opportunities to play few and far between in Sub-Saharan
Africa, it is almost a “no-brainer” that many have looked and been pushed abroad to display and export
their talents (Elliot and Maguire 2008; Darby et all 2007).
Pull factors, emerging from the country
of reception, most often appear as previously established football-specific and
general labor migration patterns and networks. Throughout its imposition on the
African game, European football, with its noticeably higher wages and more
abundant job opportunities, has always acted as a lure for the creation of
northbound Sub-Saharan migrant networks (Darby et all 2007; Cornellissen 2007). More
than just football-oriented, migrant network pull factors, like African football in general, almost always have
colonial, phonetic and geographic foundations. Following colonial and linguistic
patterns, Ghanaian, Nigerian and other Anglophone-based players often find
themselves playing in the United Kingdom and other English language-dominated
leagues such as the German Bundasliga while Francophone-based players often find
themselves playing in France and Belgium (Poli 2007). Other African football
migrant networks patterns have emerged from geographic accessibility, with
players finding themselves in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Eastern Europe in
search of breaking through with a professional club. African football migrant
networks working through geographic accessibility, however, often deal with
less legitimacy than colonial and linguistic networks and often use Northern
Africa, especially Morocco, as a sort of “springboard” to European
professionalism (Class notes 14/9/2010).
Victims of Globalization: Sub-Saharan
Football Migrants in Morocco
Desperately
in search of work after having been failed to have been signed by a
professional African or European club, many Sub-Saharan footballers have turned
to less-than-legitimate migrant networks in order to reach Europe in hopes of
signing on with a professional clubs on an ad-hoc basis. Whether through
illegal smuggling networks of fake scouts, thousands of footballers have found
their way to Morocco only to find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard
place: a stagnant, precarious socioeconomic and political position between
their previous lives in Sub-Saharan Africa and their intended future lives in
Europe (Von Einsiedel 2010). For many footballers like Nani, Ibrahim and
Youssef, they found themselves voluntarily paying their way into Morocco after
hearing, through friends and family already in the country, that opportunities
to go to Europe were abundant. Following the mindset of nearly 500,000 other
international undocumented migrants worldwide, Nani, Ibrahim and Youssef see
themselves as having more opportunities away from home no matter, even if their
current situation is less than fruitful (GCIM 2005; Darby et all 2007).
For
other Sub-Saharan football migrants, the road to being stuck in Morocco had not
been so expected. Each year hundreds if not thousands of footballing migrants
fall victims to fake scouts throughout Sub-Saharan Africa who promise players
transportation to Europe and a tryout with a European club for a heavy fee of
several thousand euros. These footballers, guaranteed to be brought to Europe
most often via Morocco, are abandoned upon arrival in the streets of Rabat and
Casablanca (Von
Einsiedel 2010; Vanguard 2010). This situation mirrors heavily similar stories
of young African players in Belgium during the late 1990s that, after being
released by their clubs, were left on the streets and in some circumstances
were forced into child prostitution in order to survive (Darby et all 2007).
While FIFA and organizations such as Foot Solidaire, an NGO based out of Paris,
have set up laws, regulations and support systems for the prevention of the
abandonment of footballers in Europe, little if anything has been done by FIFA,
the CAF or any governing organization in Africa to regulate the abandonment of
players in Sub-Saharan African and Morocco and provide them with any sort of
support system (Darby et all 2007).
To
say the least, life as a Sub-Saharan football migrant in Morocco is hard. Seen
by both the general Moroccan population and the Moroccan government as a threat
to their nation’s sovereignty and state security, the welcoming of the
ever-growing number of Sub-Saharan migrants under globalized networks over the
past fifteen years has been less than jubilant (GCIM 2005). Morocco, dealing
with its own issues of unemployment and development among its population, sees
the illegal immigration of Sub-Saharan migrants as a hamper and heavy burden
upon their society as they, quite understandably, lack the societal resources
to worry about a new incoming illegal migrant population (Evers 2010).
Morocco’s own societal needs, coupled with the Middle East’s cultural tradition
of preventing the integration of migrant populations due to social and
religious discrepancies, has made it incredibly difficult for Sub-Saharan
migrants to make any sort of structural lives for themselves (GCIM 2005).
International migrants have always been considered as unofficial representatives
and mediators between their host and home nations, but with such a harsh
welcome by the Moroccan population it has been nearly impossible for Nani,
Ibrahim, Youssef and all Sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco to bridge any sort of
connection with their host country (Poli 2006).
Yet
in their bleak situation here in Morocco, Sub-Saharan footballers have found
one connection which could indeed, although ironically, be the only bridge to
integrate successfully into their host country and its people: football.
Moroccans, like Sub-Sahara Africans and the rest of the continent’s population,
are football-crazy. Always moving with the ebb-and-flow of Moroccan politics
(King Hassan II was known to have a hand in the governance of the National team
during his regency), Morocco has always been a hot-bed of football and in fact
only lost being hosts of the FIFA 2010 World Cup to South Africa by four votes
(Willis 2004; Cornelissen 2004). Seen always as a positive cultural component
for the nation, football holds within it many of the societal complexities
needed to possibly facilitate a stable relationship between Morocco and its
influx of Sub-Saharan football migrants (Cornelissen 2007). Unfortunately, the
Moroccan domestic football league, the Botola, still holds restrictions on the
number of international players each team can have primarily to prevent the
overflow of Sub-Saharan players in the league (Class notes 14/9/2010).
While
still viewed as more of an oddity and an irregularity in the Botola rather than
a welcomed talent commodity, Sub-Saharan footballers trying to break through on
the amateur level have found different levels of integral difficulty, with
different factors making it easier and harder to break into society. For
members new to a host community, sport, particularly the universal game that is
football, has always acted as an excellent source of integration for migrant
populations. My high school team in Cambridge, Massachusetts had players from
16 different home nations including the United States, Brazil, Haiti, Portugal,
Morocco, Algeria, France, Germany and Ghana. For each member of my team,
football was a seamless way to interact, communicate, integrate and create
friendships despite cultural and linguistic boundaries. As was the case with
Nani, Ibrahim and Youssef while playing with their fellow Moroccan teammates,
football was noticeably acting as a cultural bridge as all three were
interacting with Moroccans and even speaking some Darija, a feat which had
previously been unattainable in any other social sphere I had seen them in
while here in Morocco. While Nani, Ibrahim and Youssef had all previously
proclaimed a difficulty with and disinterest in cultural integration, for the
time being I saw how football can be used to solve the troublesome and
pragmatic situation which it had created in the first place.
Conclusion:
Over
the past quarter century, the modern footballing world has seen drastic changes
under the influences of globalization and the advancement of modern media and
communication technologies. In no part of the world has this been more
noticeable than Africa, where football in the Age of Globalization has
implemented itself in ways which had never been thought possible. One of these
emerging repercussions of globalized football in Africa has been the increase of
“the beautiful game” as a legitimate and normalized vocation. As issues of
uncertainty and instability constantly flood the African game and prevent it
from ever gaining financial strength, neo-colonial systems continue to reap the
benefits of cheap football labor through football academies and football
migrant networks. The true victim in these scenarios has, and always will be,
the players themselves. As Madaras details:
“For every Arune
dindane who makes the leap from ASEC (an African club) to Anderlecht in the
Belgian top division, there are thousands of other investing millions of hours
of practice- time that could be spent on school work or learning another trade-
without even reaching the first the first hurdle. Only a handful of each year’s
intake to the top schools will ever make a living from football. The rest are
destined to be turned loose at 18 to fend for themselves” (Madaras 2001).
Feeding off their own dreams of professional stardom
perpetuated by the success stories of Michael Essien, Didier Drogba, Samuel
Eto’o and Emmanuel Adebayor, thousands of Sub-Saharan footballers have looked
towards emigration, both legal and illegal, to find a way out of their
financial promiscuity. With little other paths for which to follow, Sub-Saharan
football migrants have most often found themselves at unease in their host
countries, lost in a concentrated identity driven by the hopes of some day
making it as a football superstar. While football may only be a game to some,
for the African football migrant, surrounded by the influences of an
increasingly globalized world, his life and his game has become one in the
same, providing all the narratives to even life itself.
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In the past 25 years, Civil wars have ravaged several
West African countries such as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote D’Ivoire, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo to name a few.
