The organisation Sport et Citoyenneté has published a special edition of their scientific journal Sport and Citizenship. This Special Edition covers a subject with inevitable media hype from different angles. Sport and Citizenship wishes to take advantage of this unique occasion and the media’s attention to raise this question: “Is this really Africa’s hour?”.

The Examination of Threats to the Integrity of Sports was commissioned by the EU Sports Platform and has been launched in European Parliament. The report, elaborated by Danish research institute Oxford Research, outlines the key problems and also examines what can be done to combat the threats.

Extensive research into trafficking of young African players reveal that major European clubs systematically use loopholes in the regulation to recruit youth players from the African continent, leaving up to 20,000 former footballers living on the streets of European cities.

Greedy agents, bungling with contracts, allegations of kidnapping and threats of life: all ingredients in a drama from real life, in the middle of which stands the now 21 year old Nigerian football player John Obi Mikel. He is the main character in one of the most intricate cases of transfer of players in International football history, and his travel from Nigeria to Chelsea is described in a new book, Den Forsvunne Diamanten (“The lost Diamond”) by Norwegian Journalists Lars Backe Madsen and Jens M. Johansson.

The trafficking of football players from Africa is often wrongly regarded as a solely European phenomenon. As Pakistani journalist Shazad Ali of DAWN newspaper shows, trafficking is an issue in South Asia as well.

Each year many school-age African boys come to Europe because they believe they have a contract with a professional football club. Unfortunately, the majority have been set up by false agents and end up in the streets as illegal immigrants with no money. Now members of the European Parliament want to put an end to this illegal practice and propose a solidarity fund and prevention programmes.

A new doping study by anti-doping expert Sandro Donati estimates that 31 million people are involved in doping worldwide. The trafficking of performance-enhancing drugs poses a danger to society not only because of its links to organised crime but also because the cost of treating doping addicts is exploding.

FIFPro - the international organisation for professional football players - has reported a Danish football club to FIFA and accused it of trafficking of young football players from Nigeria. FIFPro also attacks the Danish Football Association (DBU) for issuing international transfer certificates to the players in contravention of FIFA rules.