There is a new transfer market in African football. It does not happen on FIFA TMS. It happens in Facebook inboxes, in WhatsApp groups, in Instagram DMs among others. There are no contracts, no medicals, no club badges – only six words that have become a death sentence for desperate young players: “We have a team for you.”
Senegalese goalkeeper Cheick Toure 18, believed those words. In 2025, he left his native country for Kumasi, Ghana, after being convinced by two men who called themselves agents – a Nigerien, Salifou Walid aged 32 and a Burkinabe, Aziz Ouedraogo aged 24 who are all based in Ghana. What waited for the young talented goalkeeper in Kumasi was not joining a team as the fake agents had promised. It was rather kidnapping.
His abductors seized his phone, called his own parents in Senegal to demand ransom, collected the money, and then murdered him anyway and his body was found at the Manhyia District Hospital on October 16, 2025 after going missing for five months.
Almost a year of painstaking investigations, the Ghana Police arrested the two out of the four suspects in September 2026 at their hideout in Banpanase near Mampongteng in Kumasi and they are now behind bars waiting to appear before the High Court.
The suspects after interrogation mentioned that they are a group of four with other accomplices namely Noukoubri Sylvain and Barry now all at large
This is why I call it The Killer Transfer. For years, players have been warned about fake agents duping them, abandoning them at the airport and even killing them. I personally witnessed four Ghanaian boys stranded at the DXB Airport in Dubai in 2018 after being duped by football Agents and i had to accommodate them for several weeks in my apartment.
Again, in 2018, a very talented footballer i know personally, Joe Mensah formerly of West African Football Academy tragically lost his life after collapsing through heart failure while training on a pitch in Russia. An agent had lured him to the country and the boy didn’t even undertake medicals to see if he was fully fit.
With so many African footballers desperate to travel and ply their trade abroad, the fraudsters have now deviced an easy way to get them which is through social media.
The football system in Africa is complicit. While FIFA debates agent commissions in Zurich, it has left the most dangerous market of all – the social media market where Africa’s poorest talents are hunted – completely unregulated, unpoliced, and wide open for murder and other attrocities.
The death of Toure is a very worrying situation, only God knows how many African footballers have gone missing in other parts of Africa and the world at large without a trace through this murderers pretending to be football Agents.
To every young footballer or even the established ones, no real agent will ever ask you to travel to a foreign country without a visa, without an official invitation letter from a club, and without a video call with the club official himself. No real agent negotiates your future only in Facebook, tiktok or Instagram inbox.
Before you board that bus to Ghana, Nigeria, Tunisia or anywhere, do these three things: Ask for his FIFA agent license number or the name of the agency he works with and check transfermarket if he is there and truly working for the agency. Everyone working with a player agency as scout, agents etc is on transfermarket. Players should tell their family, coaches, friends and those around them where they are going. Cheick Toure died alone because no one knew exactly who he went to meet.
If an “agent” refuses to be verified, if he rushes you, if he says “don’t tell anyone, just come quickly” – block him. That is not an agent. Your dream is valid, but your life is more valuable than any trial abroad.
Club owners, and various football associations should also be more concerned about their players. They should give them the perfect platform, pay them good wages so that they can also start building their future. Regular seminars must be held for players on other to educate them about this fake agents.
As far as football hasn’t ended, these criminals will always devise new strategies to lure, dupe and murder innocent aspiring footballers. The case of Toure is sad and is about time players sat up and not rush into the hands of this unscrupulous people.
A word to the wise is enough!.
