Laos: FIFA fines the country’s football federation for sanctioning “player-trafficking”
The South East Asian country’s Football Federation has been slapped with a (USD) $700 000 fine for illegally acquiring African talent to abode in their shores. The 2015 BBC story on the illegal transfer of minors could have played a huge role in this development as it revealed some shocking scenarios of fourteen-year-olds playing football with no pay and forced to sleep on the floor of the club’s stadium.
Laos’ top club, Champasak United is reported to have illegally acquired 23 under-age players ( fourteen and fifteen-year-olds) from West Africa and putting them in an unregistered football academy in 2015. It is also understood that the club deployed some fourteen and fifteen-year-olds for official club matches.
In accordance with their regulation of forbidding players under the age of 18 to be transferred internationally without meeting established criteria, Fifa ruled that Laos had breached the rules.
