Author: Gerard A. Akindes.

Today, playing football can be considered a global practice, a universal reference that transcends cultures and nations. Football players’ global mobility exhibits some aspects of the worldwide dimension of the culture of the game. Quantitative data (along with academic analysis and studies of the contemporary migration) rank Africa as the third-largest exporter of footballers. Such data explain the magnitude of the exodus and the migratory routes in light of Africa’s colonial history and world economic disparities. Although the colonial and neocolonial approaches to analysing the migration of African footballers remain valid, Asian trajectories of the African players’ migrations have emerged and suggest different frames of analysis. This article (after reviewing African football migration factors, such as the colonial connections and the ‘push and pull’ factor) examines the particularities and the impact that the Asian paths of migration have had on the emergence of the semi-peripheral football economy located in South Asia and South-East Asia.