Skip to content
Guest Thinkers

Cheap Labor from Africa

European soccer scouts look to Africa for budding talent because players there “are young, technically adept, athletic — and cheap.” Is this a modern day slave trade?

European soccer scouts look to Africa for budding talent because players there “are young, technically adept, athletic — and cheap.” Is this a modern day slave trade? “Footballers from Africa, the continent where the World Cup begins on June 11, are a hot commodity. European clubs have been going to Africa to look for talent since the 1950s, and in recent years the search has become a hugely profitable business,” says Spiegel Online. “About one in four foreigners playing for a top-division European club comes from Africa. It is a business that trades in hope and is run by serious managers. But unscrupulous traffickers also have their fingers in the pie.”


Related

Up Next
The bipolar extremes of American politics—red states, blue states; with us or against us; cut and run or victory; capitalism or socialism—have now divided Islam into two separate categories. There […]