2023-04-18 07:07:13
The business of the Brazilian soccer academy Base Academy consists of offering young people from that country to bring them to the Andalusian city of Granada so that they can have “European professional training, championships, friendly matches.” Everything seems magnificent: “You will live the career of a professional athlete who is looking for his place in the world soccer scene,” the advertisement promises. When they arrive in Granada, however, the football scene is not so global. The Base Academy has been sending youngsters to FC Cubillas since 2012, a club based in the town of Albolote (19,199 inhabitants) and that plays in the Andalusian division of honor —the sixth level of competition in the League—, with a scope limited to easternmost provinces of Andalusia. For the last three years, another place of arrival is Base Gabias CF, a club and soccer school founded in Las Gabias (22,312 inhabitants), and, judging by the name, a kind of delegation of the Brazilian company in Spain. Base Gabias CF plays in the Andalusian first category: that is, they only play matches between Granada and Almería.
On April 11, the National Police reported the dismantling of a double plot of alleged fraudsters who, spread over these two towns, Albolote and Las Gabias, had been charging thousands of euros to 70 foreign families —5,000 euros for admission and between 1,500 and 1,700 later each month—with the promise of turning their children into elite soccer players in Spain. Almost all the boys were Brazilian, and about thirty of them were minors. Victims of an alleged criminal plot that those responsible claim, however, as a perfectly legal business.
A former FC Cubillas coach explains that he earned 200 euros a month for his work, and a member of the Base Gabias CF technical team admits that the players of his senior team, the Andalusian first team, do not earn. that’s the picture world and supposed nest of professional athletes who were the young people who arrived in Granada and probably, as the researchers suspect, to other similar academies in Spain.
Cubillas has been welcoming young footballers for a decade. “About 200 in the last five years,” explains Félix Fernández, the club’s lawyer. The majority, coming from Brazil; but also from South Korea, the US and other countries. There were never any complaints until the end of 2022, remarks the lawyer, who denies that there is a scam. The investigation was carried out by the Immigration Brigade, which later expanded the investigations to the Gabias Base, with the result of 11 people under the watchful eye of the police and that of the Granada Investigating Court 3. The judge has yet to summon anyone.
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These clubs offered as professionals in Brazil always train on fields donated by the municipalities. Last Thursday, at half past eight in the afternoon, training began at the Antonio Izquierdo Rodríguez de Las Gabias municipal sports center. The team of local players was joined by foreigners from the academy, who had arrived a few minutes earlier in a club van. “They are a little restless but they continue their normal lives,” explained one of the organizers of the training, who last January was testifying before the police accompanied by a lawyer but never thought that this would go further. He today believes that he is being investigated, although he has not received any notification. “Here we don’t promise them great careers, just that they spend three months with us and return to their country,” he says. For the rest, he adds, “we offer accommodation, training and games.”
That is where the tangle that the judge will have to clear up begins: what exactly the Brazilian company promises, what the Spanish clubs offer, what contract the families sign —EL PAÍS has requested the model in vain— and, ultimately, if all this is a scam, a hoax, a product offered by companies beyond their means, or simply the inevitable result of unfounded expectations of families. Juan López, a police inspector who has participated in the investigation, stresses that the package of football experience offered was completed with the promise of providing academic training and regulating the stay of families, something that never occurred. And that it has been possible to verify the falsification of documents by several educational academies —also investigated—.
The policeman says that none of the visas that the clubs requested for their players was granted, since the documentation was defective or had been submitted after the deadline. The kids, thus, were forced at a certain moment to return to their country, and the process to recruit others began. The former Cubillas coach consulted by this newspaper agrees with that: he remembers that one season he managed to train up to 40 players because “many foreigners disappeared after a few months” without knowing why, “and new ones came to complete the squad.” .
Accommodation and food offered to foreign families is another point of contention between the police and the clubs. Thirty foreign Cubillas players, according to the police, stayed until December “overcrowded” in two houses. A kitchen ceiling collapsed, which, added to the complaints from the neighbors about the noise of the young people, forced them to change places. From then until a few days ago -now there is no one else-, the boys stayed in a hotel. “Four, six or eight in a room”, according to the police. “It’s a three-star hotel, it won’t be so bad,” replies the lawyer. Base Gabias, for his part, defends his accommodation: a house in the nearby town of Armilla with all the comforts and capacity, says a club source, “for 25 people.”
At this time, none of the 70 kids whom the police consider cheated no longer reside in Granada. Inspector López explains that there are “17 or 18″ complaints from parents of minors, and even some adults, against the clubs.
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