False Glory: The fate of Ivorian teens who aimed for football fame

Many children in Cote d’Ivoire grow up wanting to be the next Didier Drogba.

So what happens when you are offered the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to move to Europe to chase your footballing dreams?

You simply don’t turn it down.

So it’s hardly a surprise that Ivorian youngsters Christian Kouamé, Samuel ‘Ndri Kouassi, and Thomas and Adam Kouassi jumped at the chance to move to Italy to chase their dreams of becoming professional footballers.

Little did they know that their dream moves to Italy would eventually turn into a hellish nightmare that would expose the sinister world of illegal immigration of minors in the world of  football.

This is all exposed in the third and final episode of the gripping Showmax series False Glory, which is now available to stream on platform.

Watch the trailer for False Glory

The Baby Footballers is the story of the four Ivorian boys, aged between 12 and 17, whose parents agree to sign over guardianship so their children can move to Italy on the promise of footballing glory. 

One of them, Christian Kouamé, is now playing for Fiorentina and the Cote d’Ivoire national team. But he’s the exception to the rule. 

Another, Samuel ‘Ndri Kouassi, allegedly found himself adopted by a man he’d never met and then, after an injury, made to sleep in the stands, then released by his club, and was left homeless and to fend for himself as an illegal immigrant. 

Samuel had picked up a serious ACL injury during his first few months of playing football in Italy. He claims he wasn’t given proper medical care, and was forced to return to playing football even though wasn’t fully healed. He was also shipped off to several football clubs on loan before being released by his club and was then forced to fend for himself. 

Thomas and Adam were also simply told to leave the clubs they were signed for and were left to fend for themselves in a foreign country. 

This episode examines the complexities of the situation, where desperate families gamble on the hope that their children might become football stars. Through interviews with Italian journalist Paolo Nencioni and former coaches, the episode paints a vivid picture of the often-overlooked dark side of football’s global talent pipeline.

This led to a groundbreaking illegal immigration case against the likes of Paolo Toccafondi, the then president of AC Prato, for importing the minors – one of the first cases like this to make it to trial in Europe.

“Christian Kouame made it,” says Italian journalist Paolo Nencioni.  “He’s a player who at one point cost €15m and I don’t know how much he earns: definitely not a small amount. Others didn’t make it. The families, they probably have this lottery ticket in their head. It could be either the winning or the losing one. Perhaps, rather than saying ‘selling’ baby footballers, we should find another term, because nobody takes them and puts them on a boat and forces them to come here. It is a much more nuanced situation.”

Other interviews include Gbane El Hadj Seydou, the boys’ Ivorian coach, who adopted two of the children to get them into Italy, but later found himself sleeping in shipping containers as an illegal immigrant, and Filippo Giusti, the then president of Sestese Calcio, who adopted Christian and was then accused of illegal immigration, facing up to 15 years in prison if found guilty. 

Seydou opens up on his nightmare experience in Italy, where he claims he was barely paid for his services and only given food as a reward for his work. He was also kicked out of his accommodation and slept in a football stand for months. He also stayed in shipping containers as an illegal immigrant in Italy.

There are also gripping interviews by journalists Christopher Gleizes,  and Stefano Broglioni, as well as from  renowned sports and law lecturer Dr Ini-Obong Nkang.

False Glory is directed by Arianna Perretta and produced by CMG Productions, who won Best Documentary at the 2023 Broadcast Digital Awards for The Footballer, His Wife and the Crash, and were nominated for a 2024 True Crime Award for Football Fraudster.

Arianna and CMG are also behind the recent Showmax true-crime sports series Dark Side of Glory, which investigated a Blue Bulls rugby player who became an axe murderer, as well as the murder of Kenyan runner Agnes Tirop, who’d just set a 10 000m world record. 

False Glory is being distributed internationally by CMG Productions.