I'm in Paris at a football match with a difference.
It happens every day
and helping organise it is an African soccer hero -
former Cameroon World Cup star Emmanuel Maboang Kessack,
who divides his time between France and Cameroon.
He's still got it, man. He's still got it.
I am still buzzing over the fact that Emmanuel was playing in 1990
when I was watching England against Cameroon in the World Cup.
ADE LAUGHS
The players are some of Africa's best young talent
but they rely on a charity founded by Emmanuel for these
training sessions because they're living here illegally.
Many are victims of football agents who've cheated them
with false promises of a place with a European team.
Some estimates reckon 15,000 African footballers are now
stranded across Europe.
I was speaking to Emmanuel earlier and he said, you know,
if he went back to Cameroon and he spoke to the boys there and he said
to them, "Paris is freezing cold, you won't have anywhere to live,
"there's no food over here", those guys would still come regardless,
they would still take that chance, you know, just because they
want to live out their dream and become a professional footballer.
They may be in Europe but without the right visas,
clubs can't sign them.
Like most of the players at the game,
25-year-old Rostang Jean Tey comes from Cameroon.
He played there as a striker for the Matelots team.
This is the tiny room he shares with another African footballer.
He told me an agent had taken him for trials in Europe and Russia
in exchange for $6,000, but there were no trials.
Once they were out of Cameroon, the agent disappeared with the cash.
Too ashamed to go home,
his dream of a career in football is slipping away.
TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH:
I want to investigate how it can be that
so many talented players are being tricked in this way.
I'm going to Cameroon, Rostang's home country in West Africa.
It's one of the poorest and most corrupt places on Earth,
but this country of 20 million people
has won the African Cup of Nations four times.
I'm in the capital, Yaounde,
and I can see why even football-mad Africans
think Cameroon's passion for soccer is off the scale.
Everywhere I go in Cameroon, I see academies like this one.
I mean, there are literally hundreds of them here in Yaounde
and all of them are filled with young guys like this who
are absolutely desperate to become professional footballers in Europe.
WHISTLE BLOWS
Anyone can set up an academy to train young footballers -
they're big business and this is one of the best of them.
Hey, hey!
It's just gone 8am and I'm at the Canon training ground
and this is the training ground
of the most famous football team in Cameroon.
When I look around, this place is like a dust bowl, look at the pitch.
It's about 16 degrees, maybe a little bit hotter,
and these guys have been going at it for the last two hours.
Emmanuel's also here,
fresh from helping the players stranded in Paris.
He's one of the coaches at Canon, which is his old club.
The best players earn just $100 a month, which is why,
despite Emmanuel's warnings, they keep leaving for what
they believe are big-money deals in a growing list of countries.
Some of these deals are genuine, but many aren't.
Emmanuel says that a vast industry has sprung up in Cameroon
using football to trick and traffic talented youngsters.
And they never see the boy...
..any more.
Emmanuel takes me to meet 19-year-old Abdel Kareem,
a goalkeeper with the Tonnerre Club in the capital.
Last year, Abdel's agent told him
he had a contract to play in Miami in the US.
His whole family saw him off
as he boarded the flight with his agent and other players.
After a few hours, the flight made a scheduled stop in Ethiopia.
TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH:
And with that, the agent disappeared.
'After two days, he and the other players were sent back to Cameroon.
'Abdel's family had paid the agent 4,000 US dollars,
'their lifetime savings.'
Abdel, if you could meet that man who defrauded you
and your family, what would you say to him?
Stay strong, eh? OK.
'Abdel's still ashamed at what it's done to his family.'
That really hit me right here, man.
I could still see the pain in Abdel's eyes.
I just felt so bad for him.
And what is just so amazing to think
is that he's like any other kid in the world,
he started off with a dream
and someone took advantage of that dream
and ended up leaving him stranded in prison in the middle of nowhere.
I mean, that is just too high a price to pay.
I just can't believe it.
Soon, I'm in touch with dozens of professional players
with similar stories.
None of them have gone to the police.
Cameroon's legal system has big problems with corruption.
Money talks and the con men have plenty of it.
I meet up with Gilbert Etugay, once a striker with the Cintra Club
here in Yaounde, and his mother Katrene.
An agent told Gilbert he'd fixed the trial in Qatar
but when Gilbert arrived, nothing had been arranged.
Did you pay him any money?
10,000 US dollars? Yes.
How did you get that money?
There was family contribution...
I would have wanted justice.
Why didn't you go and pursue this guy?
What would you like to happen to this man?
Gilbert's story's a really powerful one
but the truth is it's something that's repeated
thousands of times over all over Cameroon -
all over Africa, in fact.
Back at Canon's training ground, I spot Sylvestre Etieme.
He's an agent looking for talented players he can represent.
He boasts he brokers them transfer deals,
which means both he and Canon make a commission.
..inside of the ball, so...
HE SPEAKS FRENCH
He insists that he's honest and that he recently got
two of his players contracts with Eastern European clubs.
Now he wants to represent Batsi Bruno,
a Canon player who used to play at a big Spanish club, Villarreal.
So you're going to take Batsi to Romania?
How many players have you got? How many players have you signed?
Signed? Er...
More than...?
In all my time.
And how many of them will you be able to get a contract in Europe?
Too much.
I don't know why.
WHISTLE BLOWS
But later, Bruno takes me aside
and claims that Sylvestre isn't what he seems.
THEY CONVERSE IN SPANISH
However, Sylvestre seems determined to prove that he's the real deal.
He says he's got a player about to head for a trial with
Georgian club, Dinamo Batumi.
If it's successful, he'll play for them.
I go to watch the player Sylvestre's talking about.
He's 17-year-old Patrick Barga, who plays for a top amateur team.
He's already a Cameroonian youth international.
Patrick lives in a tiny room close to the training ground.
So how are you feeling about the trip to Georgia,
the fact that you're going to be going?
TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH:
HE SPEAKS ENGLISH:
Yaya Toure? Yes, very good midfielder.
Yaya Toure!
Have you packed your bags?
Will you be getting paid when you go to Georgia and, if you're going
to be getting paid, how much is this going to change your life?
The first time you get paid or the first time you have money,
what's the first thing you'll buy?
'Patrick's come to say goodbye to his mum, Agnes,
'a schoolteacher in a nearby town.' He's anxious.
'Sylvestre comes along as well.'
And did he play football all the time in the garden?
SHE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE Yeah?
His first steps... First steps, yeah.
..as a footballer.
'Patrick's father died some years ago.
'She's full of ambition for her son.'
'I ask if they've given Sylvestre any money. He says they haven't.
'They say they have but don't want to talk about it in front of him.'
Thank you.
I want to ask a little bit about the players from Cameroon
who end up being stranded.
The bad managers take them to other countries
and then just leave them and take their money.
Does that worry you?
It was really lovely to meet you. Mwah! Have a kiss.
Oh, thank you, thank you.
THEY LAUGH
We fix to meet Patrick and Sylvestre at the airport to say goodbye.
Meanwhile, Cameroon are playing in the African Cup of Nations
and everyone's watching.
CHEERING AND CHANTING
It's really hard to understand how much football means
to the people in this continent
and it's only when you're actually here - I'm in Cameroon,
just when the African Cup of Nations is on -
that you really feel the passion.
I mean, the people here are loving it.
CHANTING
No wonder families like Patrick's look to football
to transform their lives, but it makes them vulnerable.
The next morning, I set off to meet Patrick and Sylvestre
but they don't turn up and Sylvestre stops answering his phone.
I'm really nervous that, despite his denials,
Sylvestre may be another dodgy agent.
We've just been to a bar where we previously arranged to meet
Sylvestre and he's not there.
Now we're going to a road where we think he lives.
We dropped him off down there before.
I mean, this is ridiculous, this should be...
We should be talking about a guy, a young kid, about to start
his professional career.
Instead, it's a search for a dodgy agent.
Where is he?
Sylvestre had always kept his address a secret.
We're making progress. Apparently, this is where he lives.
Our fixer, Louis, has just knocked on his door
and has been told that Sylvestre was here a few minutes ago.
This lady is going to call him,
so all we can do is wait.
Hopefully, when he gets here, we can ask him a few questions.
Ah, hello. Sylvestre.
Have to help me down.
Sylvestre, Sylvestre, what's happening?
I'm sick. You're not well?
Yeah.
Where have you been for the last couple of days?
We didn't see you yesterday. We tried to get hold of you.
Nervous, yes, yes.
Why are you nervous? What's up?
What's happened with the visa?
So let me get this right -
Patrick's visa has been denied for his trip to Georgia.
So how did Patrick feel when you told him
that his visa didn't come through?
You haven't told him? He doesn't know?
So he's still... Up until now,
he still thinks he's going to go to Georgia?
So when are you going to tell him? Sorry?
When are you going to tell Patrick?
Are you going to...?
You must... You have to tell him.
The poor guy thinks he's going to Georgia. He's excited,
he's packing his bags.
His mum thinks he's going to Georgia as well.
You have to tell him.
'I pressure Sylvestre to go and tell Patrick the bad news.'
So I am...
It's not OK, though. The guy's devastated.
Look at him.
I'm really worried for Patrick and for his mum, Agnes,
who says she's given a lot of cash to Sylvestre.
Under FIFA rules, Cameroon's Football Association, Fecafoot,
is in charge of monitoring the transfer market
but there's evidence that implicates at least one official working
with the Association with cheating and defrauding players.
'The whistleblower is Kevin King Kossongo.
'He tells me an official working with the Football Association
'asked him to recruit players to join the Aspire training scheme
'for elite players in Qatar.'
What did they have to pay for and what were
they supposed to get in return?
1,800,000...
The official pocketed the cash and denied all knowledge.
So you wasn't expecting it?
The official was Marlene Emvoutou, who'd recently been
a candidate for president of the Football Association.
When Kevin produced incriminating documents,
there was a public outcry and she was jailed.
Christopher Ndong, the lawyer who prosecuted Marlene Emvoutou,
says all that's unusual about her case is that it came to court.
He estimates 40% of transfer deals are scams in some way.
He has the talents.
You're saying the football authorities in Cameroon
are partly to blame?
Cameroon's Football Association say, under FIFA's supervision,
they're rebuilding the Association
to make it stronger and more ethical.
It's fantastic football offers these talented youngsters
the hope of working abroad -
there aren't many professions that do.
What's bad is the vast army of fraudsters destroying this hope
and the way the Cameroonian authorities let it happen.
And what's terrible is that, internationally, football,
a sport with so much money and power,
isn't prioritising this as a problem
even though thousands of cheated players
are being stranded across the world.
Just before I leave Cameroon, I call on Patrick.
His agent, Sylvestre, has stopped answering my calls
but Patrick is still hoping his trial in Georgia
with Dinamo Batumi is about to happen.
There's my room, my room.
When we got back to UK, we contacted Dinamo Batumi in Georgia.
They told us they'd never heard of Patrick
or of his agent, Sylvestre.
Subtitles by Ericsson