2023-11-14 20:09:21
“It was like a whirlpool,” said former Ivorian international footballer, Gilles Yaby Yabou, following being defrauded out of 200,000 euros by a “witch doctor.”
The forty-one-year-old spoke of two years he spent under “the magic of a traditional healer or marregarding,” saying: “You become like a slave and things can become very harmful.”
The former midfielder, who currently supervises a second-tier Swiss team, went through “difficult times” on the sporting front, while playing for the French club Nantes at the age of twenty-three, so his uncle advised him to see a therapist in Paris.
Yabi Yabou told Agence France-Presse: “I was not attracted to magic…but growing up in Ivory Coast made going to Murabit a normal thing and not considered bad, as long as you do not seek to harm anyone.”
The healer told him that his family was “cursed” and was preventing him from achieving “success and happiness,” so he prescribed sacrifices to him to repel the curses, that is, sacrificing a rooster, a goat, or a sheep, the value of which started at 500 euros, until it reached “imaginary numbers,” according to him.
Yabi Yabo, who wants to speak to raise awareness among young athletes, added that things “got dark following that” as it turned into “something like black magic.”
He continued: “Al-Murabit made me believe that the spirits he worked for loved me and wanted me to become rich. This was the taste.”
“Sacrificing his son”
The sacrifices needed to make those riches cost 40,000, 50,000, then 60,000 euros. When the football player was financially exhausted, the “magician” told him: “If he has no more money, he must sacrifice his son.” The player pointed out that he then “had the strength to say ‘stop’ and did not visit him following that.”
Yabi Yabo explained that he was deceived over a period of two years, by paying 200,000 euros ($213,000) and did not reap “anything positive” in return.
He explained: “He knew how to put me in a spiral, and I lost the ability to think clearly.” The player explained that “his Christian faith gave him the strength to put an end to Al-Murabit’s control over him.”
The matter reached the point where some “witch doctors” threatened him with “revenge… for fear of separating from them.”
Joel Thibault, an evangelical pastor to many athletes in France, has had to deal with the “catastrophic results” for football and basketball players caught in similar circumstances.
He said: “I know that clubs allow their players to go to Senegal following they are injured, because doctors cannot treat them. They come back and play with mascots and protective belts.”
Those who visited therapists in France told him that “when things got bad they were asked to make extra sacrifices, pay them more money and then they went into a spiral.”
He added: “I see the damage… depressed players who had suicidal thoughts.”
“He became like a god”
Another Ivorian player, Cisse Barate, told AFP how he experienced the same hell.
When he started representing a senior team in Abidjan at the age of 16, he was told that therapists “helped him perform better and protected him from envy.”
Barate, now 55 years old, admitted that he “fell into the trap,” adding that he began “bathing with potions” prescribed to him by a “witch doctor,” made sacrifices, and wore a protective leather belt with verses from the Qur’an sewn on it.
He continued: “As soon as I was injured and things were not going well, I would visit him. He became like a god to me. You become dependent on him and he took advantage of that.”
The player resorted to magicians once more when he moved to play in Europe, and said: “I was always injured. Al-Murabit told me that the reason for this was because I did not shower with the potions at the appropriate time or because of the cold weather.”
In the locker room, he also noticed that his teammates from Senegal or Cameroon were wearing “shields” and “perfumes” or belts under their shirts.
Pogba case
Thibaut said that the blackmail case of French midfielder Paul Pogba last year highlighted the seriousness of the problem “with more and more money in the world of football.”
Pogba filed a complaint with the Public Prosecution Office, saying he was “the target of a €13 million blackmail plot.”
The world champion with his country in the 2018 World Cup in Russia told investigators that his blackmailers, who included his older brother Mathias and one of his childhood friends, wanted to “tarnish his reputation” by claiming that he “asked one of the stationers to cast a spell on his teammate, the Paris Saint-Germain striker.” Kylian Mbappe,” something he denied.
Thibaut insisted: “Players told me that when they were undergoing doping tests, the doctors might not inject them with a needle until their trainers were called.”
Several marregardings said they felt “stigmatized” by the headlines generated by Pogba’s case.
For his part, Fakoli, a Guinean-born healer who works outside Paris, told AFP: “This controversy has harmed our profession… This is truly the dark side,” considering that “there must really be a distinction between witch doctors who cast spells, and healers who help.”
But according to Yabi Yabu, “As long as there are players looking for shortcuts to success, unfortunately the influence of witch doctors will not stop.”
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