The "Pogfamily" is tearing up in public.
Mathias Pogba has threatened his little brother Paul, star of the France team, with "revelations" about his true nature.
In return, the Juventus Turin player accused his elder of "attempted extortion".
Implicitly, it is the question of the entourage that takes shape.
Behind this vague notion, the family, the friends of the first or the last hour and a host of vultures, which hover around the football players, sport which inevitably attracts profiteers of all kinds in view of the sums brewed.
Result: the world of football is full of sordid stories even if it remains stunned by the large-scale extortion attempt, of which Paul Pogba claims to be a victim.
In January, the former captain of the France team, Patrice Evra, had already bluntly exposed this truth: the players are subjected to constant attempts at racketeering.
>> To read also: The Pogba, from the passion for football to the accusations of extortion
"It's difficult, because you have nothing and, all of a sudden, you find yourself with all this money. They are not psychologically ready", explains "Tonton Pat" in Le Parisien.
"The players don't have help and that's the problem. You have a lot of people around you, especially when you go out. There are players in Paris who are being racketeered, they go to restaurants where people tell them: 'You pay our bill or we break your legs'."
Annoyed by the case targeting the player of Juventus Turin, the Nantes coach Antoine Kombouaré deplored, on Tuesday, the dangers which weigh on the players.
"For the kids, it's very hard. When you earn so much money, there are so many vultures around," he said at a press conference.
"Whether it's the family circle, the first circle, as they say, the agents, the advisers... you can't imagine the pressure that guys are under."
In France, the union of professional footballers UNFP (National Union of Professional Footballers) regularly alerts players to an old and well-known phenomenon, but for which the means of pressure have multiplied with the Internet: "A photo, a video of an action of a player can change everything" because "it will go around the world in 30 seconds", notes the union.
"At some point, they are prime targets for unscrupulous people, so they are told to be careful, to be wary," he told AFP.
"It's very complicated because sometimes we tend to trust someone in the family, even a distant one, or someone we've known for a long time. We are far from imagining that there may be issues of racketeering, of money."
However, the problem of racketeering by entourages is far from new, as several cases have proven in recent years.
Karim Benzema, his best friend and the sextape affair
This is without a doubt the most well-known extortion story in French football.
Remained in public opinion as "the Valbuena sextape affair", it began in 2015. On the sidelines of a gathering of the France team, the former Marseillais received several telephone calls, during which his interlocutors allegedly tried to blackmail him, against the non-distribution of an intimate video.
The former Marseillais files a complaint.
The investigation will reveal that Karim Benzema, then partner of Valbuena in Blues, intervened.
At the heart of the case, another "Karim": Karim Zenati, originally like Benzema from the cities of Bron, in the suburbs of Lyon, and lifelong friend of the Madrilenian.
The Real Madrid striker was sentenced in November 2021 to a one-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 75,000 euros for "complicity in attempted blackmail".
He declined to appeal.
This affair will have sealed the career of Valbuena but also that of Benzema in the France team, for which he will not have been recalled until 2021 for the Euro.
N'Golo Kanté: complaint against his former image consultant
Proof that extortion cases affect everyone in football, N'Golo Kanté, despite his image as a tireless good footballer, was not spared.
In November 2019, Paul Pogba's pair in the France team filed a complaint for "fraud", "attempted fraud", "breach of trust" and "illegal exercise of the profession of sports agent" against Nouari Khiari, his former image consultant.
“I believe that my trust has been abused. We had reached an agreement to terminate the contract, but this person went back on it. pressure on me", he explained in an interview with the team.
"At first, I agreed to pay. But this person refused to justify his work. After a first payment, he continued to ask me for others. With members of my entourage, we understood that she was only trying to extort money from me for no consideration."
The complaints were dismissed by the French courts.
Emmanuel Adebayor, the knife under the throat
Already in 2018, the Togolese star Emmanuel Adebayor confided in the documentary "Ma part d'ombre" by Canal +.
Excerpts circulated widely on social networks following the “Pogba affair”.
The former star of Sparrowhawks confides in it the difficult relationship he had with his family once he started to break through in Metz, then Monaco.
At the age of 15, he wakes up with a knife to his throat pointed by his own brother who is asking him for money to start a car import-export business between Germany and Togo.
He empties his account to give her the money before calling the police.
His family turned their backs on him, believing that "the money had given him a big head".
The threats don't stop there: "One day after practice I was very tired and went to take a nap. I woke up and there was a knife in my throat. When I opened my eyes, my two brothers were there. They were screaming and saying that I was wasting their time. Peter was getting very angry and Kola was putting up with him (sic). I said to them, 'If this is the only way to solve this problem …Kill me and take the money!' That's when they put the knife on the table. As soon as you become a footballer, as soon as you become famous, as soon as you start earning some money, everything changes."
💬: "There are a lot of African players who suffer from this (...) I thought about suicide... I was ready, the drugs were next to me"@E_Adebayor reveals himself in #MaPartDOmbre pic. twitter.com/RDu9CjXNDI
– CANAL+ Foot (@CanalplusFoot) January 7, 2018
💬: "They put a knife to my throat!"
@E_Adebayor confides in his astounding relationship with his family to @dacourtolivier and @Marc_Sauvourel in #MaPartDOmbre on @canalplus 📺 pic.twitter.com/TIBEGLVkL7
– CANAL+ Foot (@CanalplusFoot) January 7, 2018
Emmanuel Adebayor says he thought about suicide during those years.
In 2015, the former Arsenal and Tottenham striker settled his accounts on his Facebook page in a long letter so that "other African families learn from this".
Yohan Mollo ruined by his agents
The legal proceedings have been going on since 2019 but Yohan Mollo made the case public in May 2022: on the Media Carré, he claims to have been scammed by his agents, who allegedly stole several million euros from him.
Yohan Mollo the ex-attacker of @ASSEofficiel @AS_Monaco @fczenit_en says he is "ruined" and "ripped off" of more than 10 million euros by his former agents.
He tells everything for the first time.
It's SQUARE!
Full interview here: https://t.co/N92FSL2hW5 pic.twitter.com/Bsy4HSSO5h
— SQUARE (@lemediacarre) May 14, 2022
The former Ligue 1 player, notably from Saint-Étienne, Stade Malherbe Caen and even AS Monaco, is targeting Franck Bichon and Patrick Blondeau, who allegedly scammed him for more than ten years, taking out consumer loans on his behalf and buying real estate with money from his account.
"Today, I am banned from banking, stuck at the Banque de France and I am on trial with all the banks because I owe money from everywhere," he says.
"They took my life."
The trial is due to open on September 23 in Marseille.
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