TURKEY: Immigrant footballers from Africa find only a dead end when they are enticed to come to Turkey, writes Nicholas Birch in Istanbul
It was set to be the big grudge match: for Nigeria, the opportunity to repeat last year's victory. For Guinea, the chance of revenge. Then came news of the police swoop, 36 hours before kick-off. Guinea's entire midfield was among the 60 people arrested.
As reasons for postponing an international football final go, it sounds far-fetched. But the African Cup in Istanbul never was run of the mill. Now in its third year, it's a tournament featuring players united by one thing only: their illegality.
Some are migrants, unknown thousands of whom congregate here before crossing into Europe. But more have stories like Boubakar Bah's: brought to Turkey in 2003 with a one-way ticket and the promise of a glittering career, he never even got a trial.
"For two weeks, an agent trailed me around the big clubs he said were interested in me," says this former star of a first division soccer team in Conakry, Guinea's capital. "When he realised nothing was going to happen, he disappeared." With his tourist visa out of date and three weeks of hotel bills to pay, Bah couldn't go back. "My gullibility and that man cost me my career," he says.
Creator of two of the four goals Guinea scored to beat Ghana in the semi-finals, he has few illusions about the Cup. "It's really only half a competition, but if you stop playing, that means you've stopped hoping", he says. "I haven't done that yet."
Sitting by a dilapidated pitch in another Istanbul district where Nigerian footballers train every morning, competition organiser Donald Adekunle is more pragmatic. "The loneliness is one of the worst things about being stranded here," says this 26-year-old defender. "Football is like church: it brings people together." It also gives players a second chance to impress potential selectors. After last year's competition, clubs gave 10 footballers trials. This year, that figure has risen to 15.
It's easy enough getting clubs to take players on, cautions Adekunle. "Far more difficult is persuading them to legalise your status." He played with a Turkish team two years back, and knows what he's talking about. When the time came to sign a proper contract, the management refused to pay the fine he owed for overstaying his visa.
It's not that the clubs are stingy. It's that, in a country where second and third division sides are reserved for local players, the only realistic hope for Africans is the amateur league.
"You've watched the matches," Boubakar Bah says angrily. "You know we're worth more than that." He's probably right, but few in Turkey are listening.
At the Turkish FA, officials say they've never heard of the football underclass Bah represents. Nor has the Turkish office of the International Organisation for Migration, a US-based NGO specialising in people-trafficking.
"What you see in Turkey is a version of a pan-European phenomenon", says Raffaele Poli, who researches the trade in footballers at the International Centre for the Study of Sport in Switzerland.
Poli agrees much of the blame for the phenomenon lies with the agents who ship them abroad under false pretences.
"The players are a raw material they can speculate on," he explains. "You may lose 10, but if just one makes a success of things, and you're there to sign the transfers, you stand to earn a lot of money." But he points out that dealing with unlicensed agents is banned under FIFA regulations. Unofficial agents continue to find work only because clubs tolerate them.
They're also helped by football's overwhelmingly positive image in the world's media, argues Marie-Laure Nan, of Culture Foot Solidaire, a French NGO fighting against the worst excesses of the trade.
"To an African kid, football means wealth and fame. They need to be educated about the realities." It's something that PK, Adekunle's partner in the Nigerian defence, does every time he phones home.
"Coming here was a mistake," he says, "and if I'm still playing today, it's to legalise my position, nothing more." Released mid-September after a month in detention , Boubakar Bah has now come round to the same opinion.
Before his arrest, he talked of sending a video of his performance in the final to agents in France.
Now, he just wants to get home to Guinea. "Legal or illegal, it makes no difference", he says. "There is no life for us here."