AMAD’S TRAFFICKING STORY SHOULD BE A WARNING TO FOOTBALL

IF THE Football Association wish to know where to start with their newest safeguarding measures, they could investigate a story with a mercifully happy ending. Amad Diallo is a Manchester United player now and will probably end up a rich one. His services may yet cost the club a £37million fee to Serie A side Atalanta. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer sees him as the club’s future on the right wing and Diallo (left) scored on only his third appearance, against AC Milan in the Europa League. On some websites, however, Diallo is still listed as Amad Traore. That was the name under which he entered Italy before he was even a teenager, with a gang of imposters pretending to be his parents and wider family. Hamed Mamadou Traore, the founder of his team in Abidjan, capital of Ivory Coast, was ‘dad’. His wife, Marina Edwige Teher, played ‘mum’. Her sister Larissa Ghislaine Teher and Larissa’s husband Zadi Gildas Abou claimed to be parents of Diallo’s ‘cousins’ — the other young boys who were trafficked with him. Bly Blaise Tehe, married to an Italian citizen, also had a fake ‘son’. They entered under Italy’s family unification programme. DNA tests have proved the group are unrelated, and the adult organisers await trial, with a possible punishment of 15 years in prison. Diallo, meanwhile — he dropped the Traore alias on his 18th birthday — thrived. He was spotted by Atalanta playing for Boca Barco, a regional youth team in Emilia-Romagna, and shot through their age-group ranks, making his senior debut at 16. Hamed Junior Traore, his brother, is also in Serie A with Sassuolo, on loan from Empoli. Diallo’s ‘mum’ remains employed by Atalanta. The trip was a success, but that doesn’t make it right. It is estimated 15,000 young Africans are trafficked to Europe each year, promised trials and fortune. Shady agents with links to organised crime charge families for the passage, only to abandon the children at the other end. And if football is interested in where the next Barry Bennell could operate, it is there, in the unregulated shadows. Now get to work.