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Slavery in African Football, Says Fifpro

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BY MITCHEL OBI.

In a shocking turn of events, the International Federation of Professional Footballers, FIFPro, has revealed that 41% of African footballers receive their salaries late or are not paid at all.

According to the Secretary General of the international players union, FIFPro, Theo van Seggelen, a labour market research of 14,000 players in 54 African countries found that 41% of football professionals do not get a salary and 45% earn less than $1,000 a month.

Theo van Seggelen revealed this on Wednesday when addressing the 2017 FIFPro Division Africa Annual Congress at the Kempinski Hotel in Accra, Ghana.

He said FIFPro finds the situation unacceptable and was hopeful of putting an end to the situation after holding talks with Confederation of African Football vice president Kwesi Nyantakyi today.

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“I understand that we will meet the CAF Vice President and the President of the Ghanaian Federation, Kwesi Nyantakyi.

“I really look forward to speaking with him and I will like to confront him and you also with the facts, as you all know we have published our labour market research which shows that still, 41% of professional players in Africa do not receive their salaries on time or even are not paid at all,” Theo van Seggelen said.

“This is something for FIFpro which is not acceptable and I really hope that we can convince FIFA, the clubs and also the leagues that we have to put an end to that as it is our collective responsibility and we must not rest till we tackle it.”

“The football player has a very short career which is his job and work and everybody working in the world has to be paid and why not our professional players and this a priority and we must stop this before the end of the year,” he stressed.

The Congress is supposed to continue today, Thursday, July 8 and close later in the day.

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Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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