The Portuguese Academy and its Global Football Trafficking Network
Before being dismantled in 2023, the Bsports Academy in Portugal held trainings around the world, allowing it to find plenty of young players who were lied to, trafficked and extorted.
In June 2023, Portuguese authorities raided a prominent football academy, Bsports Academy, based near Porto. Over 100 young players from around the world would be rescued. The case was seen as one of the worst recent examples of the human trafficking crisis affecting modern football.
However, the tale is not complete. The Sports and Crime Briefing has tracked how, over several years, Bsports Academy set up an elaborate network of partners on four continents, organising training camps to find young victims and lure them to Portugal.
The Raid
On a humid June morning in 2023, a convoy of police vehicles made their way towards Riba d’Ave, a small town of 3,000 people northeast of Porto.
The group was led by officers from Portugal’s Judicial Police and the Immigration and Borders Service. Operation El Dourado was under way. Its target: the Bsports football academy, a training facility for young players in the country that had signed deals around the world.
The raid was weeks in the making.
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