Search: ' youth'

On a rare weekend when Tyneside’s sporting focus was not on football Harry Pearson saw Gateshead take on Cambridge United

It’s the Saturday of the Junior Great North Run. At Newcastle Central Station the usual hordes of stag and hen-nighters in identikit Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts, nurse’s uniforms and pink cowboy hats with signs saying “sperm donor needed” have been temporarily displaced by mobs of enthusiastic tots in running gear, herded together by harassed adult helpers. (“Emma, man, if you drink any more of that pop before you set off you’re gonna throw up, I’m telling you.”)

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Slavia Prague were brought to their knees by financial chaos and mysterious ownership. Sam Beckwith reports that the Czech club’s future could be just as murky

The 2007-08 season seemed like a new dawn for Slavia Prague. Having finally qualified for the Champions League’s group phase at the sixth attempt, the Czech Republic’s oldest club went on to win their first league title since 1996. The following season, the popular Prague side moved in to their newly reconstructed Eden stadium and won the title again. Talk of the Sesivani (literally “sewn-togethers”) replacing rivals Sparta as Czech football’s dominant force seemed justified. Then it all went wrong.

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Henrik Manninen explains how a raft of match-fixing allegations in the far north of Europre has swiftly ended an international experiment

“If I was wearing my cap the bet would be on, and if I took the cap off, there would be no business,” said Wilson Raj Perumal on his chosen method for catching the attention of players during a Finnish league cup game between Rovaniemen Palloseura (RoPS) and Jaro played on February 20 this year.

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Dermot Corrigan reviews a new film and its focus on young footballers chasing success and fortune in Europe

It is said that football can provide a route out of poverty, with FIFA often claiming that the game’s commercial revenues can “trickle down”. Soka Afrika, a new feature-length documentary which follows two young African players as they try to make it in European football, sets out to show another side to this story.

The film’s two subjects are well chosen. Ndomo Julien Sabo was playing youth football in Cameroon when a French agent persuaded his parents to mortgage the family home to “invest” in their son’s future. Brought to Paris, he trained in a clandestine network of camps around the city’s outskirts, playing trial games against other young imports.

When he got injured the agent disappeared, leaving 16-year-old Sabo completely alone and cold and hungry. He befriended fellow Africans sleeping rough and avoiding the police, and eventually managed to get back to Cameroon, but his parents were not overly happy to see him returning penniless. In Yaoundé he recovers his confidence and form, and returns to Europe better prepared for a professional career.

Ndomo’s story is cut with that of Kermit Erasmus, who was spotted by Feyenoord playing youth football in South Africa. This move went much more smoothly – at only 18 he is playing first-team games for satellite club Excelsior, showing off his fancy mobile phone to a former school-mate in a Port Elizabeth township and playing a football game on his big-screen TV in his nice apartment in Holland. He’s a cocky enough character but still likeable. We see him scoring three goals at the 2009 Under-20 World Cup in Egypt, but also struggling to make the step up with his club and the national senior team.

The film is stylishly put together by director Suridh Hassan and producers Simon Laub and Sam Potter, looking more like a relatively big-budget current affairs feature documentary than a typical fly-on-the-wall football film.

There are funky colourful credits and titles, an African drum-heavy soundtrack and edgy camerawork digitally filtered to bring out the greenness of Yaoundé and the greyness of Europe. The film-makers got great access, with the camera in the South African dressing room for pre-game team talks, on the touchline with openly unscrupulous agents at games in Cameroon and even with Sepp Blatter making a patronising contribution to a “Football for Hope” conference in South Africa.

The real star of the film is Jean-Claude Mbvoumin, a former Cameroon international who played club football in the 1990s in France before founding Paris-based NGO Culture Foot Solidaire. Mbvoumin describes the way promising young African players are brought to Europe as “child trafficking” and helps join the dots to make the film’s case.

Clubs and agents in both Europe and Africa, national football federations and under-age coaches, FIFA, even players and their families are all complicit in the system. Everyone involved knows the unwritten rules of the game. There is no surprise when Sabo is dropped from the Cameroon Under-20 squad as he cannot afford to pay the required bribe. “Corruption is everywhere,” Mbvoumin says. “I can’t say one country is more corrupt than others.” It would be better for everyone if African players stayed at home until they were ready – both in a footballing and personal sense – for the move to Europe he reckons.

Football for everyone in Soka Afrika is a means to get rich (or get by), not a goal in itself. Both Erasmus and Sabo really believe in the “rags to riches” possibilities. The film concentrates more on their concerns about making a living and building a career than training methods or tactics or trophies. We see a modern business structure feeding on the hopes of the resource and information poor. A few thrive and are successful, but many of those who make the big bucks are not the most deserving. The context could be any similar industry – perhaps fashion or music – where large numbers of talented young people with dreams are chewed up and spat out by the system.

Soka Afrika is produced by Masnomis and was screened in London during the Kicking & Screening Soccer Film Festival on September 23-29. For more information see sokaafrika.com

From WSC 296 October 201

Mysterious foreign signings don’t always live up to heightened expectations. Andy Clark recalls how Dundee United fans found out the hard way

When Dundee United manager Jim McLean attempted to exploit the South American transfer market in 1991, his hope of bringing the next Gabriel Batistuta to the banks of the Tay didn’t quite work out as planned. In the early nineties, the formidable side United had become over the previous two decades began to falter. With an increased number of foreign players arriving in Scotland along with the recent Souness revolution at Rangers and growing pressure from fans for a big money signing, McLean decided to go international.

So it was in August 1991 that Dundee United announced the signing of ‘flying Argentinian winger’ Walter Rojas, a twenty-year old with dark flowing locks and “blistering pace”, from Buenos Aires club side San Lorenzo for a reported fee of £200k. United had apparently beaten off a host of clubs including Sampdoria and Foggia for the Argentine under-21 international signature. “El Explosivo“, as he had been nicknamed in his home country, was unveiled in a blaze of publicity. Fans were assured his debut would be imminent.

Then it all went very quiet. Weeks passed without any sign of the new long-haired wing wizard. According to the club, he had damaged a thigh muscle in training. However, rumours were circulating that Rojas might not be the player everyone thought he was. Opinion was rife in the city he was a “duffer”, apparently being taken to the cleaners by the reserve and youth team players in training. After almost three months, Rojas finally turned out for the reserves against Aberdeen in what proved to be his solitary appearance in a tangerine shirt and was well short of the standard required. One fan later claimed he had only two decent crosses in the game “when he blessed himself coming on and off the park”.

Then the conspiracy theories began. One source claimed United had been the victim of mistaken identity and had signed the wrong player. Another alleged that McLean had seen video footage of a prolific striker and was keen to sign him. A deal was negotiated but the player didn’t fancy the move so United were offered Rojas and took a chance.

Whatever the truth, United had been done. Rojas had only been a reserve team player at San Lorenzo and had played a mere four times for the first eleven in four years. Despite being inconspicuous by his absence on the park, there was no shortage of sightings of the player off it. ‘Rojas-spotting became a popular pastime with United fans in and around the city. “I used to see him in Buddies (a popular nightclub)” remembers one “he was strangely fond of having his jumper draped over his shoulders”. Another spotted him at a wedding in nearby Broughty Ferry.

I also had the thrill of encountering Rojas at the Megabowl Leisure Complex in Dundee. He looked slightly embarrassed and kept diverting my attention to the guy he was with. “Victor…this Victor,” he repeated in broken English. I thought nothing of it. He turned out to be Argentinian international Victor Ferreya, signed by United that day. Rojas clearly knew he was something of a fraud and had been embarrassed by all the attention whilst his new team-mate’s arrival appeared to have gone un-noticed. Rojas and Ferreya; were also invited to the Glenrothes Arabs player of the year dance. “They turned up in shell-suits, won nearly all the raffle prizes then swiftly fucked off back to Dundee,” recalled a witness.

Rojas returned to San Lorenzo then played for another three Argentine clubs before ending his career with Uruguayan side Huracan Buceo in 2000. Despite never playing a first team game, he achieved cult status among Arabs, as United fans are known. His moniker appears in a range of guises as usernames on messageboards and he has become a by-word for a duff foreign signing (and there have been plenty).

Twenty years on, McLean finally broke his silence on the bizarre episode. Rojas apparently only cost United an air fare and a few week’s expenses. There was no mistaken identity but having never seen him play, and to get around red tape, the player signed a contract and release form at the same time meaning United kept him if he was any good or could release him if he was a “dumpling”. The Explosive One proved to be a damp squib.

From WSC 295 September 2011