Paul Pogba (centre) denies paying a witch doctor to put the evil eye on France teammate Kylian Mbappe (left). Photo: Icon Sport via Getty Images
Voodoo healers swindle top footballers out of hundreds of thousands of euros, with some stars becoming the «slaves» of unscrupulous so-called healers who sacrifice cockerels to ensure success on and off the field.< /p>
Players below the authority of such traditional healers, known as «marabouts», say they are finding it difficult to break free due to threats of magical vengeance.
The disease came to light after Paul Pogba died last year , a World Cup winner in France, has been accused of assaulting his international teammate Kylian Mbappe.
The former Manchester United star has denied the allegations, but other footballers have fallen victim to extortion after turned to healers for help.
“It was like a spiral,” said Gilles Yapi Yapo, a former Ivory Coast international who claimed he was cheated out of 200,000 euros (pounds sterling). 174,000) by a witch doctor who suggested he “sacrifice his son” if he couldn’t pay him.
“You’re like a slave and that could cause serious harm,” the 41-year-old footballer said of two years, which he spent under the spell of a traditional healer.
The midfielder, who now manages a team in the Swiss second division, was «going through a difficult period» playing for French Ligue 1 club Nantes when his uncle advised him to see a witch doctor in Paris.
A healer told him that his family was cursed. , which prevented him from “succeeding and being happy”, and suggested making sacrifices “to counteract the curses”.
Sacrificing a cockerel, goat or ram started at 500 euros, but quickly grew to “colossal sums” , Yapi Yapo told AFP news agency.
But one day it became dark, “something like black magic,” Yapi Yapo said.
“The marabout made me believe that the spirits he worked for loved me and wanted to make me rich,” he said. “It was bait.”
The sacrifices required to achieve this wealth cost «40,000 euros, 50,000 euros, then 60,000 euros.» When a footballer fell into financial difficulties, a witch doctor warned him that he would “have to sacrifice his son” if he ran out of money.
“I had the power to say stop, but I never went back to him,” Yapi Yapo said.
In two years, he gave 200,000 euros and received “nothing positive in return.” “He knew how to send me into a spiral, and I lost the ability to think clearly.”
The footballer said his Christian faith helped him end the marabou's hold over him.
Some healers “threaten revenge,” he said, “so there is a fear of breaking out of them.”
“I fell into a trap”
Another footballer born in Ivory Coast , Cisse Baratte, told AFP he experienced the same ordeal. When he started playing for a top club in Abidjan at age 16, he was told that healers could help him perform better and protect him “from envy.”
“I fell into a trap,” he admitted. Baratta, now 55, began by taking “potion showers” prescribed by a healer, making sacrifices and wearing a leather protective belt with Koranic verses sewn into it.
“As soon as I got injured or things were not going well, I would go to him. He became like a god to me… You become dependent, and he took advantage of that,” Baratte said.
With so much money at stake, elite athletes «regularly turn to witch doctors and the paranormal,» said Joel Thibault, an evangelical pastor who is the spiritual director of French striker Olivier Giroud and other top athletes.
They, too. may promise sexual prowess.
Voodoo practitioners have taken control of several French football players of West African descent. spell Credits: iStockphoto
It all remained out of the public eye until Pogba, whose parents are from Guinea, became the victim of an alleged extortion attempt by some in his circle last year.
His brother later claimed that Pogba paid a healer to put the evil eye on Mbappe, but both the midfielder and the healer denied this during police interrogation. Marabou said the significant payments Pogba made to him were for «good deeds in Africa».
Pastor Thibault said he has witnessed the “catastrophic consequences” of such practices on other football and basketball players.
“I know that there are clubs that allow players to go to Senegal after they are injured because the doctors cannot cure them. They come back and play with amulets and protective belts.”
Those who go to healers in France told him “that when things get worse, they are told to make more sacrifices, to pay more for them.” , and then it goes in a spiral,” he added. “I see the damage… players who are depressed and have suicidal thoughts.”
“Some [marabouts] are like psychotherapists… and others are scammers,” said Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan, an anthropologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research.
Some are from the Sufi tradition with a deep “religious culture and desire to help,” he said, but others know little more than “a few surahs of the Koran and extract maximum benefit for their victims.”
As long as there are players looking for “shortcuts to success,” the influence of witch doctors on the game “unfortunately will not stop,” Yapi Yapo said.
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