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Hippolyte Boumlag, aka Hipólito, is a highly sought-after coach in Madrid for promising young football players. But flick through his Instagram account, and you won’t find a large number of followers; his posts are erratic, and one featuring Real Madrid striker Vinícius Jr. has garnered only eight likes. Despite his relatively unknown persona, the players he trains — whom I meet on a hot summer morning in Madrid — are testament to the aspirational figure he has become to some of the country’s football youth.
Almost all these players were born in Spain to foreign parents and play in the under-19 division for clubs like Atlético Madrid or Rayo Vallecano, competing in top youth leagues such as La Liga and travelling around the world for the UEFA Youth League.
People learn about Boumlag through word of mouth. His work as a technical football coach in Spain has likely put many youngsters into the list of winners. But the man waiting for me at the public sports center in Alcobendas, Madrid, is not from football stardom. He is gentle, resolute, and outspoken. Standing at the football pitch, he shouts to the players, “When you arrive ten times and only score one goal, then you have a problem.” His style is direct, yet without diminishing the player’s achievements, as he is determined to improve their dribbling, passing, and shooting accuracy.
When I first spoke with Boumlag on the phone, I wanted to hear about his encounters with young foreign football players who had fallen victim to human trafficking. They are lured to Europe by the promise of trial periods with major clubs, in exchange for a substantial sum of money. Often these trials don’t materialize, and the minors end up roaming the streets, without resources, in an unknown country.
But Boumlag replied categorically on the issue, “It is rare nowadays.” The latest FIFA regulation (Article 19 of the Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players) prohibits international transfers for players under the age of 18. The law effectively protects minors from abusive practices, which have been significantly reduced. Indeed, he admits, every law has its loophole. FIFA established a series of exceptions to this prohibitive rule, which proved controversial. An international transfer is permitted when the player is between 16 and 18 years old and the transfer is carried out within the European Union or the European Economic Area.
When I meet Boumlag in person, he insists, “There are no more poorly informed Africans coming to Spain.” Everyone in Africa has access to mobile phones, and families are generally aware of the fraudulent practices surrounding young players. Nevertheless, circumstances sometimes compel them to take risks. “Yet the media continues to focus their reporting on deceived Africans in the same vein they report on people crossing from Africa to Spain in small boats,” he observes. After many years of immigration debate in Spain, Boumlag questions why the media persists in portraying immigration this way, especially when “most immigrants arrive by plane and enter like tourists.”
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Hippolyte Boumlag was born into a family of six in Douala, Cameroon’s largest city and economic capital. His father was a teacher, and all of his siblings graduated from university. He played football in the first league and, as a young boy, faced the dilemma of either attending university or continuing as a professional football player. His father encouraged him to move to Spain and live with his uncle.
I arrived here [Spain] in 1993, and it took a long time for me to get residency,” says Boumlag. He played for the football club UE Sant Andreu. But when management lowered his salary, he decided to quit football and pursue coaching degrees, feeling comfortable with the teaching path his father had chosen. He joined the Marcet Foundation, a renowned youth education and football organization in Barcelona. There, he contributed to establishing internal rules and creating programs focused on developing young players, with a strong emphasis on both sports training and academic education.
After eight years, he left the Marcet Foundation to establish himself as an independent technical developer for young players. He fell out of love with the academy. International conflicts and wars began to drive up the number of children and adolescents enrolled at the academy, whose wealthy parents see professional football as an opportunity to take them out of the country and enter Spain. “Often these foreign kids come from countries under dictatorships like Russia, North Korea, Venezuela, or corrupt governments in Africa. There’s insecurity surrounding these individuals who have money, as they fear a coup d’état or kidnapping,” explains Boumlag. These children arrive as students to eventually become professional football players, although many know they won’t make it.
In 2024, FIFA detected possible trafficking of minors from Africa, Asia, and South America in various clubs established in Catalonia. In particular, FIFA asked clubs like the Marcet Foundation, the Hospitalet Academy Foundation, Veterans Catalunya, and PE Maniagua, along with the school used as a front for their academic training to clarify what was happening with more than 50 cases of minors who have arrived in Spain with a one-year scholarship to study and play football, and who then illegally extend their stay beyond the one-year limit allowed by FIFA regulations for minors. The academies denied all the accusations in a written statement.
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As a football coach who works every day with youngsters of immigrant parents, Boumlag’s perspective on the immigration debate is that it lacks an honest discourse. He argues that “the immigration debate is outdated” and hinders a more progressive discussion. “When you talk to these kids about immigration, it surprisingly feels like an alien concept because they don’t experience it around them, and therefore they have no arguments,” says Boumlag. “Their parents don’t tell them ‘we’re from outside.’ They urge them to study, to be a decent guy, and that’s all.”
Boumlag believes that populist politicians and the public can easily twist the current outdated debate about immigration. And when it comes to Africans, in all its complexity, he notes that they are often grouped, despite their diverse backgrounds, although the only thing they have in common is their skin colour. Meanwhile, these protagonists of the immigration debate go about their daily lives, rarely paying attention to what is said about them from the outside.
One week ago, the clash between locals and Moroccan immigrants in the small town of Pacheco in southern Spain dominated prime-time news on Spanish TV for days. I can’t help but wonder if the players of Boumlag have followed the heated discussion. They don’t. Just Ivan Okorie Igidi, a player in Alavés, whose parents are originally from Nigeria, referred to the incident as “something involving foreigners.”
The players don’t even blink for one second when asked, “Where are you from?” to respond that they come from Spain. Only Joel Anón Gómez, a player for Rayo Vallecano, mentions his Cameroonian father and Spanish mother, saying with a smile and a fashionable style in his eyebrows, “I am also proud to be African.” “What does immigration mean to you?” I ask, “From my point of view, it is about people who have difficulties in their home countries and need to go to another country for a better life.” However, he also adds, “someone may come here and do bad things because maybe they haven’t been taught well at home on how to live a good life, like not stealing. These actions can affect us all.” While he shares a few negative experiences due to his skin color, he concludes, “Look, like anywhere else, there are good people and bad people. I’ve met more good people than bad. So I’ll stick with that.”
Jorge Dominguez Lituba, who plays for Atlético de Madrid, has a father from Madrid and a mother from Congo. He explains that although he trains with Atlético Madrid during the season, he also practices with Boumlag to gain extra confidence with the ball. “Imagine a lot of youngsters from Africa are coming to Spain, and they all want to play football professionally. Would you see that as competition for you?” I ask. To which he replies: “Well, if many talented football players arrive, there might be more competition. But it would make me better.”
For these wide-eyed youngsters, everything revolves around values — training with Boumlag forges values such as discipline, perseverance, and commitment. One youngster at a time, Boumlag contributes to nurturing the notion of equality and solidarity – he also includes in the group a kid or two with great potential whose parents can’t afford his coaching.
One young player remarked about the coach, “He’s a great person and a very hard worker. He can stay here in the morning and put up with all of us. I value that a lot because he also teaches me how to work.” Meanwhile, on the football field, discussions about immigration are noticeably absent, making the current political debate feel strangely irrelevant.
