A fake family, ‘talent scout’ with links to mafia... Amad’s tale was beyond belief

AT first glance, it seemed to be no more than a timely clarification. An opportunity to set the record straight before he embarked upon a thrilling new chapter in his career.

But Amad Diallo had more reason than the interests of accuracy to tell his thousands of Instagram followers that he no longer wanted to be known as Amad Diallo Traore back in July 2020.

It was a means of putting distance between himself and the murky world where thousands of young footballers are trafficked from Africa to Europe each year. One that had innocently snared him as a child.

The 19-year-old Ivorian, who is in line to make his debut for Rangers against Ross County today after completing his loan move from Manchester United, is very much one of the lucky ones.

It was only because his supreme natural talent elevated him to professional status with Atalanta that he eventually prospered.

For the vast majority of others who arrive in nations like Italy from countries such as the Ivory Coast, the trial they have been promised with one of the superpowers of European football by shady middlemen doesn’t exist.

Families who have put their hopes and meagre savings in the hands of ruthless charlatans see their children left abandoned. Happy endings like Diallo’s are very much the exception to the rule.

The on-loan Rangers winger’s story began on the streets of Abidjan in the Ivory Coast but it was in a public prosecutor’s office in Parma in 2020 where the narrative took a sinister turn.

An investigation into trafficking of football players was launched in the Italian city.

It began after agent and talent scout Giovanni Damiano Drago gave information to police following his own arrest in 2017 for smuggling five players into the country as part of ‘Operation Baby Elephant’.

Believed to have links to the mafia, Drago made a plea bargain, which left him with a suspended sentence of one year and ten months.

The information he provided in return led to five adults being accused of smuggling Diallo, his alleged brother Hamed and three other young African footballers into Italy on a family visa.

The charges ranged from forgery to aiding and abetting illegal immigration. Two of them claimed to be the parents of the ‘brothers’, allowing the boys to enter through that country’s ‘family reunification’ system.

Hamed Mamadou Traore, the founder of the Abidjan team in the Ivory Coast that the future Manchester United star once played for, was said to have acted as the fake father to Diallo while his wife Marina Edwige Teher took the part of his mum.

Her sister Larissa Ghislaine Teher and respective husband Zadi Gildas Abou claimed to be parents of Diallo’s ‘cousins’. One plays for Lecce and another represents a club in Serie D. Finally, Bly Blaise Tehe, who is married to an Italian citizen, had the fifth fake son.

The investigation also questioned the relationship between Amad and Hamed, amid doubts that they were even siblings.

Given that Diallo was a minor at the time and completely innocent of all that was happening around him, the subsequent decision of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) to take the matter up was perplexing.

He eventually agreed to pay a fine of around £40,000 last year after it was established that false documents and fake parents were used to secure him entry into the country and then sign for two clubs.

This despite the fact that he was aged just 12 when he signed for a tiny club in Parma called ASD Boca Barco in 2015.

‘We didn’t discover Amad, but rather he just came to us,’ his youth coach Denis Cerlini told the BBC. From the very first moment it was evident the kid was special.’

Former Italy goalkeeper Giovanni Galli would later witness the player in action after a friend asked him to take a look at the brothers. He liked what he saw and soon Diallo was on the move to Atalanta.

Such was his impact as a substitute in Serie A that the next big move was only a matter of time. Before he had even started a first-team game, Manchester United came calling in October 2020 with a £19million move confirmed last January. In time, this fee could rise to as much as £37m.

For povertystricken families in cities like Abidjan, those kind of figures are hypnotic. They are, of course, the stuff of fantasy for all but one in tens of thousands. Yet that doesn’t prevent the middle men from ruthlessly exploiting them.

Foot Solidaire, a charity set up to counter football trafficking, estimate that 15,000 teenage footballers are shipped out of West African countries every year — every parent they leave behind having been convinced their offspring can be the next Didier Drogba.

Individuals claiming to be well-connected football agents, usually unsuccessful former footballers, demand fees of up to £6,500 from families who believe the only way out of poverty is for their child to make it as a football superstar.

When the youngsters arrive in Europe, there are no bright lights. No accommodation. The agent abandons the child and moves on to the next vulnerable target.

Sources in the Ivory Coast and at the International Organisation for Migration say some are left so desperate they take to the sea in makeshift boats. Many never make it to their destination.

‘Football trafficking is a finely tuned business,’ said Ed Hawkins, author of The Lost Boys: Inside Football’s Slave Trade.

‘Everyone knows their role: agents who are intent on circumnavigating transfer rules, the criminal underworld providing documents for underage players, young dreamers desperate for riches, administrators who look the other way and the clubs who want the next big star.

‘They are all cajoled by football’s obsession with money. The capacity for greed stamps a player’s passport, real or fake.

‘Thousands of boys have been lured to Europe on the premise of trials with clubs. But when they arrive there is no trial and the “football agent” they pinned their hopes on is, in reality, a human trafficker. They end up in drug gangs, slave labour or prostitution.’

Once mentioned in the same breath as Lionel Messi by his former Atalanta team-mate Papu Gomez, the chances of Diallo being abandoned by those who his family trusted were negligible.

However irregular the circumstances in which he arrived in Italy, his life there was said to have been comfortable and secure. But many others weren’t so fortunate. And the same grim fates could befall countless others in the future. Diallo’s story should act as much as a warning as an

inspiration.