After 32 players illegally emigrated to Europe, a fourth-tier Tunisian football club found itself without a squad.
Ghardimaou announced that they were forced to halt all activities and withdraw from all tournaments and future matches.
The club’s president, Jamil Meftahi, blamed the lack of players on emigration, claiming that 32 players had left Tunisia due to the country’s economic crisis over the last three years.
Mr. Meftahi stated that the players left for Europe due to a “lack of financial means,” and admitted that the club was unable to pay them.
‘We’ve halted activities and suspended our matches,’ the fourth-division Ghardimaou club’s president Jamil Meftahi said, blaming ‘clandestine emigration’.
He said, over the past three years, 32 of the club’s players have emigrated to Europe.
Tunisia is in the grip of a long, worsening economic crisis that has pushed many of its citizens to take desperate measures in search of better lives abroad.
The Ghardimaou players, aged between 17 and 22, ‘either left by sea or went via Serbia then illegally crossed the border into other countries’, Meftahi said.
Tunisians could travel to Serbia without a visa until November of last year, giving thousands of people an alternative to potentially deadly boat crossings in the Central Mediterranean, the world’s deadliest migration route.
Those fleeing came from marginalized areas such as Ghardimaou, an inland rural district near the Algerian border but far from Tunisia’s coastal economic hubs.
Meftahi blamed players’ ‘lack of financial means’ for their departures.
‘We can’t afford equipment, shirts or shoes, and the players aren’t being paid,’ he said.