The basic story is widely known. During the AFCON final on January 18, Senegal left the field due to what they feel was bias towards Morocco before returning and winning the trophy. CAF ruled this was grounds to grant the title to Morocco, annd Senegal has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The basics: the walkoff, the title being stripped, Senegal’s CAS appeal have been widely covered. What has not been covered with equal rigour is everything around them: the hidden internal instruction that nearly threw the match out entirely, the fans still sitting in a Moroccan prison, the betting firms that paid out twice because they had no other option, and a host nation whose showcase tournament has left a legacy more complicated than its stadiums deserved.

The Sports and Crime Briefing goes through seven points that may have been missed.

1. The same institution gave two completely opposite verdicts

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On Sunday, February 22, Mexican special forces, acting on U.S. intelligence, killed Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, leader of the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG), in rural Jalisco. By nightfall, Guadalajara was paralysed.

Buses were torched. The entire public transport network shut down. Around 1,000 people were trapped overnight inside the city zoo as cartel gunmen blocked access roads. Military helicopters circled above neighbourhoods while residents crossed the city on foot to avoid roadblocks.

In Puerto Vallarta, a tourism mecca along the coast, streets were sealed and vehicles burned. Jalisco’s governor declared a Code Red. At both Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta airports, passengers took cover as National Guard troops established defensive positions inside terminals. Southwest, Delta, United, Air Canada and WestJet suspended flights. The U.S. State Department opened a crisis hotline. Multiple governments issued travel advisories.

This came less than four months before Guadalajara is supposed to host matches within the 2026 World Cup.

How important is Guadalajara to Mexican football?

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On 26 January, former FIFA President Sepp Blatter publicly endorsed a call for fans to boycott the World Cup in the United States. Writing on social media, Blatter stated: “For the fans, there’s only one piece of advice: stay away from the USA!”

He was adding to a furore sparked by Mark Pieth, FIFA’s former head of governance reform, who said the "abuses by immigration services" and the "marginalisation of political opponents" meant fans should avoid the US.

Despite Blatter being 89, and having been banned in disgrace amid the FIFAGate corruption scandals, his warning is unprecedented.

Blatter has significant support.

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The case was a rare trial to come out of the DOJ’s landmark 2015 FIFA corruption probe and cast a spotlight on Fox’s role in the global soccer media market.

Its collapse marks a convenient retreat by US anti‑corruption enforcement in sport just months before the country co‑hosts the 2026 World Cup. The decision follows a broader rollback of foreign‑bribery prosecutions under Trump‑era policies and recent court rulings that have made such cases harder to win.

What was the case about?

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In a panic, the son sped away towards Limassol General Hospital, striking several cars. Demosthenous was declared dead on arrival.

The abandoned van was found burned by police soon after, with two shell casings inside.

Within hours of Demosthenous’s murder on October 17, the two shooters, cousins of Georgian origin, had fled Cyprus by ferry to Turkey before crossing into Greece.

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It is facing a war on three separate fronts.

First, in November, the Turkish Football Federation’s “Clean Hands” operation suspended two of the club’s key defenders for betting violations, part of a purge affecting over 1,000 players nationwide.

Second, the club is defending itself against criminal charges related to a $14 million sponsorship deal with an illegal gambling operator.

Third, investigations into a black-market ticket scheme suggest €56 million in annual revenue has been siphoned by Galatsaray insiders and “ultra” fan networks.

Together, these crises have exposed a very worrying pattern of systemic governance failures at the club.

The Sports and Crime Briefing explains all the legal scandals facing Galatasaray.

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The court’s decision was highly controversial.

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Within 48 hours, police arrested a 31-year-old suspect, a registered football agent, on suspicion of firearm possession with intent to cause fear of violence, blackmail, and driving without a licence.

The name of the agent has now been confirmed by Italian media.

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As revealed this week, over 150 referees were actively betting on football. More than 370 had registered betting accounts. One official bet 18,227 times. Dozens more did so over 1,000 times. Some referees were placing bets while working matches. They used real names on legal accounts, they never expected to get into trouble.

But for years, nobody thought to check referee IDs against betting company registries, despite whistleblowers sounding the alarm.

The Sports and Crime Briefing lays out five reasons the audit should have happened far sooner, and the mess Turkey now faces.

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The man, named only as Issah, who brought him there said it was an accident, but police found severe wounds to his abdomen. The boy had been severely beaten and tortured.

Tragically, the Sports and Crime Briefing confirmed that a number of other players from Senegal are still being held in Ghana, with little to no information as to their whereabouts.

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FIFA upheld sanctions announced in September. FAM was fined over $430,000 and the seven players involved were banned from football for 12 months. FIFA’s investigation found that birth certificates for the players’ grandparents had been falsified, a violation of the rules governing player eligibility.

This scandal centers on FIFA’s so-called “grandfather rule,” which allows a player to represent a country if a parent or grandparent was born there (or if the player has lived in that country for a certain number of years). Malaysia used this rule to invent family histories for players in order to fast-track their eligibility for the national team.

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Around 9 p.m., two men arrived on a motorcycle, barged into the gathering, and opened fire with 9mm pistols at González and those around him. González was hit in the head and upper body and killed at once. He was 31 years old. Another man was gravely wounded and died en route to the hospital.

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Instead of taking rapid action against the player, Vieira branded the whistleblowers as “blackmailers” and buried the entire story. A year later, Ponck was Desportivo das Aves for 1.2 million euros.

The story might have remained under the radar, but in May 2025, Ponck was arrested in Cape Verde for falsifying documents.

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In reality, Djabi was 19 years old. He was about to become a case study for age fraud in football.

His path through Portugal’s most prestigious clubs, including Sporting Lisbon and Benfica, before landing in his current team, Denmark’s FC Midtjylland reveals a porous ecosystem where forged documents, friendly agents, and loose oversight continue to enable the trafficking and laundering of football players’ true selves.

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The first time, he flew from Senegal to Azerbaijan on the promise of a professional football trial. When he arrived at the gates of a club in Baku, duffel bag in hand, the coaches told him they’d never heard of him. The “agent” who arranged the trip had already pocketed several thousand euros and stopped replying.

By luck, the club’s coach took pity. He gave Alioune a trial anyway. To everyone’s surprise, the young Senegalese midfielder earned a contract.

So when a new message landed in Alioune’s Instagram inbox in late June, promising another shot at Europe, his guard was up.

The sender introduced himself simply as “Alex,” a football agent with an enticing offer: a trial with Ajax Amsterdam’s under-21 team. “I have something in the Netherlands now. Direct signing,” he wrote. Attached was a screenshot of a supposed message from an Ajax coach, claiming the club urgently needed midfielders, wingers, and strikers.

Soon after, a six-page “contract” arrived, allegedly from Ajax. It bore no signatures. When Alioune asked why, Alex explained it was a “pre-contract” that needed to be signed first, before it could be validated. Then, contradicting himself, he claimed the document wasn’t supposed to be shown to anyone at all.

It didn’t add up.

Ajax’s academy is one of the most prestigious youth systems in the world, the launchpad of legends from Johan Cruyff to Wesley Sneijder. Its recruitment is meticulous.

The idea that such a club would cold-message a player through a freelance Instagram agent, send an unsigned six-page deal, and insist on secrecy was absurd.

Alioune called him out.

Alex bristled. “Football is politics… Nothing is impossible… Believe what ever you wish,” he wrote, before disappearing.

This story is part of a broader collaborative investigation by Kicker, The Sports and Crime Briefing, and Público, uncovering the global system enabling the exploitation and trafficking of young African footballers. This project was carried out with support from Journalismfund Europe.

Who is Alex?

The fake agent cottage industry is decades-old. Every year, agents descend on Africa and Latin America to try and ensnare hundreds, if not thousands, of young footballers.

These fake agents dangle false promises of trials and contracts abroad, charging desperate players hefty fees for invitations and visas that never materialise.

But while the scam is well-known in the footballing world, the persistence of these agents has not been well-documented. Their scams can survive public exposure and shame, social media accounts can be shut down and re-opened at will, player photos and club logos can be stolen with complete impunity to further the lie.

The Sports and Crime Briefing has spent the last few months following Alex, a fake agent who is emblematic of this scam. His name is Alexey Mirontsev. Operating primarily through Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, Mirontsev portrays himself as a globe-trotting intermediary who can make players’ European ambitions come true – for a price. This article delves into who Mirontsev is, the tactics he uses, and why he stands as a model example of the fake agent phenomenon plaguing world football today.

On social media, Alexey Mirontsev carefully crafts the image of a devout Muslim and successful football agent. His Instagram accounts, of which he has opened many, showcase photos of players supposedly signing contracts and posts announcing “done deals.”

In one post, Mirontsev claimed he had “helped over 200 players” achieve their dreams. He thanks Allah for his success and advertises urgent deals across Europe from top clubs in Spain, the UK and Germany to lower-division clubs in Eastern Europe.

His posts range from showing him alongside players to photos of random players from around the world, signing real contracts. Legitimate links to any of these are never revealed.

It is all a lie. He sent Alioune a photo of a New Zealand passport in his name, and a FIFA Match Agent card. But FIFA’s agent database lists no such person, and football authorities in New Zealand have never heard of him. He lists Stockholm, Sweden as his location, his mobile number is Swedish, but he appears to be constantly travelling.

The passport and Match Agent cards are fakes, stealing the photo of a real agent, Andrey Grushin, based in Cyprus.

Mirontsev has taken over huge parts of Grushin’s life. In the past few years, Grushin has travelled to Geylang International (Singapore), Istanbulspor (Turkey), Jiading Huilong (China), and Malut United (Indonesia).

All of these have been used by Mirontsev to further the lie.

Mirontsev has spent years trawling youth leagues and social media feeds across West Africa, targeting ambitious young players with scripted promises of trials at elite European clubs.

The scam is decades-old.

But Mirontsev is unusually persistent — and unusually grandiose.

According to research by The Sports and Crime Briefing, Mirontsev has approached dozens of players in the past three years alone, often recycling phrases, logos, and pitch materials.

In 2025, his bait was the Ajax under-21s. In 2023 and 2024, it was Liverpool, the reigning English champions.

In that version, players were told to deposit £800, supposedly to cover an “invitation letter,” visa fees, and flights to the UK. There was no invitation. No visa. No trial.

What there was, however, was a promise: a £5,000 weekly salary and an astonishing £350,000 signing bonus. These sums would be appealing for a Premier League academy player, let alone an unknown teenager from Dakar or Lagos.

“The Reds’ academy is looking for a midfielder, a goalkeeper, wingers and a striker, ages 16 to 30, for a direct signing. The player must deposit £800 before anything. These £800 cover the invitation, visa and flight. The player will travel in 25 days – it’s urgent. If you don’t have the money, don’t message me,” he wrote on WhatsApp.

The pay-to-play “visa fee” is a hallmark of the scam. If a player hesitated, Mirontsev would cut them off: “No money, no trial.”

But Liverpool was just one of many club borrowed to lend credibility. On Mirontsev’s now-deleted Instagram accounts, Motherwell FC in Scotland were said to be offering £15,000 per week and a £500,000 bonus. AJ Auxerre in France? €12,000 a week, €450,000 bonus. In different posts, with the same template, he claimed to be recruiting for Genoa in Italy, Malaga in Spain, Gefle IF in Sweden, and even Valour FC in Canada.

Each time, the promise was the same: sign now, wire the deposit, become a star.

None of it was real. Needless to say, no legitimate club scouts unknown foreign players through generic Instagram posts requiring upfront payments. But the illusion works for some.

Mirontsev has survived through multiple Instagram and Facebook purges, regularly deleting his account and returning under a slightly altered handle.

Claiming Successes That Are Not His Own

On social media, Mirontsev cultivates the image of a well-connected, globe-trotting agent. He regularly posts photos of young players signing contracts, tagging their names, thanking them for “trusting the process,” and implying he orchestrated their success.

But most of it is smoke and mirrors.

On August 20, 2025, he posted a photo of Vinnie Hayward, a rising talent at Aston Villa, pen in hand, signing a contract. “Thank you for trusting me,” the caption read, as if Mirontsev had brokered the deal. In truth, Hayward had been in Villa’s academy for years and signed professionally six months earlier, in February, a fact easily verified via the club’s own website, from which the image was taken.

It’s a familiar trick. Mirontsev has made similar claims about at least a half-dozen other players, including:

• Luke Skinner (Bristol City),

• Olalere Oluwasegun (Aarhus Fremad, Denmark),

• Jeremiah Kayode (KAA Gent, Belgium),

• Nolan Song (RAAL La Louvière, Belgium),

• Zion Henry (KRC Genk, Belgium),

• Scott Brady (Drogheda United, Ireland).

The Sports and Crime Briefing reached out to the clubs involved.

“We’ve never heard of this agent,” replied RAAL La Louvière by email, one of several such categorical denials.

In each case, the pictures were taken from club websites and Mirontsev reposted them weeks or months later. In none of these did he appear in the pictures. When asked about this, Mirontsev claimed that “I don't know to be in the photo of signing, but I made the transfer possible. All this are my work not yours and I can't be telling you how I work. You pay me and I do my job.”

In July 2025, under a real photo of Grushin in China, he posted an ad offering trials with:

• Ajax B team: €5,000/month salary, €300,000 signing bonus, $1,000 “processing fee.”

• Real Madrid B team: €4,000/month, €200,000 signing bonus, $1,200 processing.

• Málaga main team: €7,000/month, €400,000 bonus, $1,500 processing fee plus an “official car.”

The claims were utter fantasy. No European club signs unknown players via generic Facebook flyers. No unknown player receives half-a-million euros as a bonus.

Adding to the surrealism, every post is hashtagged with an odd cocktail of buzzwords:
#Olympics #Eminem #yankees #viralreelschallenge.

The Cyprus Connection

In fact, Mirontsev is not Mirontsev at all. His entire online persona is ripped off of a real agent, Andrey Grushin, based in Cyprus.

Going back several years, Mirontsev has stolen the photos and identity of Grushin to perpetuate his lies. Grushin, based in Cyprus, has seen many pictures of his players and trips abroad plastered over Mirontsev’s various social media.

So who is Alexey Mirontsev, really, and what does he have to say for himself? Journalists from Sports and Crime Briefing (SCB) set out to get answers. Mirontsev’s WhatsApp number was circulating among wary players, so we reached out directly, identifying himself and laying out the allegations. The response was a tirade of denial, deflection, and a touch of the bizarre.

In the chat, Mirontsev was immediately hostile at the mention of his dubious reputation. “I think you are in the wrong place,” he wrote dismissively when the journalist introduced the topic.

“I don’t give a fuck what the press says about me,”Mirontsev snapped, making it clear he had no concern for media exposés. He bragged that “I work with MAFIANS and club owners to help players survive and get deal. I am not a scammer,” suggesting he operates through shadowy connections behind the scenes rather than through official channels.

The word “Mafians” appears all over his social media.

When asked to provide proof of his legitimacy, such as a FIFA agent license or documentation of past transfers, Mirontsev flatly refused: “I won’t share no FIFA license with you,” he said.

As the conversation continued, Mirontsev doubled down on his innocence. “I have never scammed anyone. Anyone who says I’m fake should bring evidence,” he insisted, demanding that the burden of proof lay on others. He alleged that “many other Instagram accounts” bearing the name Alexey Mirontsev were fakes impersonating him, as if to blame any scam reports on copycats.

But moments later, his tone shifted to thinly veiled threats and self-justification. “Get evidence ” He invoked God as his witness, writing “Allah is the greatest 🙏. You might have the whole world to tell I’m a scammer but I have Allah to run to. …A clear conscience fears nothing – go on.” In Mirontsev’s view, he was a righteous underdog persecuted by detractors.

When pressed about the payments he solicits, Mirontsev did not deny asking for money – instead, he argued that his fees were fair. “Do you have evidence that they paid and I didn’t do the job?” he retorted. When told that football clubs Mirontsev claimed to work with had ever heard of him, his reply was that “Lol, the club might not know me in person – doesn’t mean I don’t have my ways. That’s why it means working with the MAFIANS.” In essence, he suggested that he could bypass official club knowledge by greasing palms or using criminal networks.

By the end of the exchange, Mirontsev grew tired of the questions.

“People just come out to call me scammer, lol, without knowing my job. Football job is underground,” he lamented.

However, as the Sports and Crime Briefing reveals, everything went wrong.

Security plans were ignored, police stood by idly, requests for backup went unanswered. The days since have seen a political firestorm start in Argentina.

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