SMILING for the cameras, Amad Diallo looked delighted this week as he signed a stunning new deal with Manchester United.

The dazzling prodigy – originally from the Ivory Coast – has fulfilled the dream of so many African youngsters of a lucrative career at one of the world’s richest clubs.

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It’s a remarkable turnaround in fortunes for the gifted youngster whose footballing journey began with him being trafficked to Europe as a 12-year-old.

His dramatic equalising goal against arch-rivals Liverpool last Sunday follows his brilliantly executed volley to seal victory in the Manchester derby.

His story will now be one of riches and, if he can help revive slumbering giant United, glory too.

Yet, for thousands of other African youngsters, the promises of trials at clubs like United, Real Madrid, AC Milan and Paris Saint-Germain made by shysters claiming to be agents are a sick con.

These ‘agents’ demand thousands in upfront payments which often amount to the life-savings of a player’s family.

The trials never materialise. The ‘agents’ disappear with the cash and the teenagers are abandoned, leaving them at risk of being sexually exploited or left destitute.

A few years ago a young lad turned up at the reception at Tottenham’s old White Hart Lane ground saying he’d come from overseas for his trial with the club.

The youngster had been conned, there was no trial. Spurs’ safeguarding procedures kicked in and the police and local authorities were contacted.

Charity Foot Solidaire has estimated that as many as 15,000 teenage footballers are shipped out of West African countries every year under false pretences.

Former Watford midfielder Al Bangura has told how attempts were made to force him into the sex trade after he was trafficked into the UK.

Fleeing his native Sierra Leone after elders tried to make him follow in the footsteps of his late father and become the leader of a voodoo cult, he made for neighbouring Guinea aged just 14.

There a Frenchman promised to help him secure his dream of bringing him to the UK to become a Premier League footballer.

Bangura revealed: “I didn’t know he had another different intention – to get me into the sex trade.”

On arriving in the UK, he says he was taken to premises where he met men who hadn’t come to discuss his football career.

 “All of a sudden I saw two or three guys come around me, trying to rape me and make me do stuff,” he remembered.

“Because I was young and I was small, I just started screaming. They probably thought I knew what I was there for – obviously I know what I came over here for, I was here to play football.

“I was just crying and proper screaming and I tried to make my way out – I was cold, I was crying, I was shaking, I didn’t know what to do, I was all over the place.

“I made my way outside. I didn’t know where to start, I thought it was the end of my life.”

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Bangura managed to escape and seek asylum. He was spotted by a talent scout and joined Watford when he was 16 and later awarded a work permit based on his footballing abilities.

The youngster played for the Hornets in the Premier League and also played for Brighton, Blackpool, Forest Green Rovers and Coventry City.

Bangura, now 36, has worked with the Premier League and charities to raise awareness on trafficking.

“I think there’s loads of vulnerable kids in Africa who want to achieve what I’ve achieved in my life,” he said.

“There’s loads of kids who might not even tell their parents, or their parents might use their last money to make sure they come over here to play football and they end up doing something else.

“It’s important for me, having been through what I’ve been through in my life, for me to say I’ve been through that, I’ve survived, but what about the young kids coming up, will they survive?

“Are they going to be able to cope with that? So we really need to find a way to stop all of that.

“It’s quite emotional to talk about it now, I’m happy I’ve got over it, but it’s sad for me.”

Crooked agents

Dr Serhat Yilmaz – a Lecturer in Sports Law at Loughborough University – describes football trafficking of children as “a dark form of modern slavery”.

Ramshackle football academies have sprung up on dustbowl pitches across West Africa with youngsters chasing the dream of a lucrative contract with a top European team.

Crooked agents wheedle cash out of families after promising child players a trial at a footballing giant.

Instead many are abandoned or enslaved on reaching Britain and other leading footballing nations.

An investigator with the Spanish National Police says the number of trafficking cases is “sharply increasing” there.

One youngster, 17-year-old Tidiane, originally from Conakry, Guinea, believed his dream of playing professional football in Spain had come true.

Scouted while playing in his homeland, his family raised cash to pay a smuggler who promised a place in a Barcelona academy.

“I was brought to Spain in March 2023 with documents saying that I had come on a school exchange trip, along with several other Guineans my age,” he revealed.

The youngsters were told that they would be supported by an academy while continuing to go to school.

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Tidiane added: “After 15 days, we still hadn’t started school or football training.

“They didn’t tell us anything, and after a month and a half, we were asked to pay again, even though it hadn’t been planned.

“We were lost, so we fled late one night while everyone was sleeping.”

With no money and his ID card confiscated by his smuggler, Tidiane was reduced to scavenging for food and sleeping in parks for five months.

In October 2023, he was rescued by the Caritas charity who are helping him restart his schooling.

The teenager said: “My story is far too common in Spain, many of us end up in the clutches of ill-intentioned people who take advantage of youth and their dreams.”

International governing body FIFA’s Article 19 – written in 2003 – forbids clubs from signing international players below the age of 18.

Since then, amid football’s scramble for new young talent, agents, players and clubs have been trying to break it.

Article 19 has a clause allowing a club to sign a player under the age of 18 if it can be proved the child’s family was moving to that country for “reasons other than football”.

It means job opportunities for the child’s parents can suddenly emerge in the city of the club that is interested in signing the youngster.

Diallo’s journey

Manchester United star Amad Diallo managed to leave his Ivory Coast homeland and, aged 12, and join an Italian club.

His footballing journey – well before arriving at Old Trafford – left him a pawn in the sometimes murky world of signing young African talent.

Born in Abidjan, the Ivory Coast’s capital in 2002, his precocious talent suggested he had the ability to follow countrymen Didier Drogba, Yaya Toure and Gervinho to stardom in Europe.

In 2014, the youngster – then known as Amad Diallo Traore – joined minnows ASD Boca Barco not far from Parma. His brother Hamed Junior Traore, also a gifted footballer, would join him.

The pair were able to make a new life in Italy under the family reunification system as their parents were Italian residents.

My story is far too common in Spain, many of us end up in the clutches of ill-intentioned people who take advantage of youth and their dreams.

Tidane

Youth coach Denis Cerlini would later tell the BBC: “We didn’t discover Amad, but rather he just came to us. It was a great stroke of luck.”

The brilliant youngster and his brother were noticed by Giovanni Galli, the ex AC Milan goalkeeper who played for Italy at the 1986 World Cup, who was working for an Italian third division club.

Galli invited the brothers for a trial, remembering: “I quickly saw they were simply too good for us. Amad played with bigger boys and drove them insane with his dribbling.”

Instead, Galli tipped off Serie A club Atalanta who signed Diallo in 2015. His brother signed for Empoli.

Then in 2017 agent and talent scout Giovanni Damiano Drago was arrested as part of Operation Baby Elephant, an investigation into the trafficking of footballers.

In a plea bargain, Drago gave information to police about the immigration status of Diallo and other young players. It left the scout with a suspended sentence of one year and 10 months.

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Five people were arrested, accused of smuggling Diallo, his brother and three other young footballers into Italy.

DNA tests by investigators proved Diallo and his ‘brother’ – now on Bournemouth’s books – were not related to the purported parents. It was all an elaborate sham.

Incredibly, the scam led to Diallo – who was a child when he was trafficked – being fined £42,000 by the Italia FA. Hamed Junior Traore received a fine for the same amount.

Diallo dropped his fake surname Traore on his 18th birthday.

Dreams & nightmares

In January 2021 Diallo joined Manchester United for £18.7million from Atalanta. He has been described as the “jewel in the crown” of new manager Ruben Amorim’s team.

In West Africa, thousands of young footballers will be admiring the now 22-year-old’s progress, dreaming of their own lucrative career.

Some, desperate for the riches European football can offer, take matters into their own hands.

On the migration routes along the Mediterranean coast and in the camps of Calais and Dunkirk I’ve met many aspiring young footballers trying to make it to the UK by flimsy boat.

Dr Ini-Obong Nkang, 32,  author of the book Football Trafficking: A Legal Analysis of the Trade of African Minors – says the key to preventing trafficking is to boost African leagues.

Dr Nkang told The Sun: “Dig deep, and you’ll find South African players aren’t being trafficked because South Africa has the most developed league on the continent.

“They can see for themselves that, ‘OK, if I stay here and join an academy, I can still make a future for myself’.

“In West Africa – where the bulk of trafficked players come from, the leagues are not up to scratch. That has to change.”

Diallo’s goals against Liverpool and Manchester City made him the toast of Old Trafford.

For other African youngsters dreaming of football’s wealth and glory, their journey to Europe at the hands of traffickers brings only misery.

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