As it does for many soccer players, the day finally came when Anatole Ngamukol was told by his club that it was time to move on.
Embarking on a new season in Ligue 1, Stade de Reims decided they had no further use for the player who had helped them climb out of the second division. He had turned 30 a few months earlier and had not been scoring many goals. The club wanted out of the contract.
However, Ngamukol had other ideas. Without attractive job offers from other teams, a family to feed and another kid on the way, the player decided he would rather stay in Reims to see out the last year of his two-year contract.
Photo: AP
That is where things got nasty, he said.
Rather than let him try to play his way back into the team, Ngamukol said that Reims packed him off to purgatory, sending him to train with their reserve team, where he was banned from playing any matches and sometimes made to practice alone, running loops around the pitch while coaches worked with his teammates.
This cold shoulder was the team’s way of applying pressure to get him to quit, he said.
In France, soccer players use an English word to describe such treatment: le loft.
Evoking an image of being locked in an attic, it refers to a no-man’s land where clubs park players they no longer want, but cannot get rid of immediately or who have fallen out of favor with coaches and club officials.
Players subjected to the most extreme forms of “lofting” have described themselves as being suddenly ostracized; ordered to train with youth teams, reserves or alone; and subjected to petty humiliations including the loss of access to lockers, parking places or showers.
Speaking in an interview, Ngamukol said that Reims officials told him: “You’ll not get a single minute, no playing time at all, you won’t even be part of the pro team.”
The complete disappearance of the player who had made 29 appearances for Reims the previous season did not pass unnoticed. People stopped him during his grocery shopping to ask why he was not playing.
Players often suffer their exclusion in silence and quietly agree to leave the club with a payoff, the French National Union of Professional Footballers said.
“Lofters” are often fearful that complaining publicly would dissuade other clubs from hiring them, the union said.
“Most of all, they’re scared that if they sue their club, then all of football will say: ‘We’re not taking this player because he’s not compliant,’” union vice president David Terrier said. “So players don’t dare stand up to the clubs, because they are scared that they’ll be imprisoned by the football system and blacklisted.”
Not Ngamukol.
He and another former “lofter,” ex-Paris Saint-Germain star Hatem Ben Arfa, are turning to the courts for redress.
In both cases, their lawyers are arguing that in excluding the players from first-team action, Reims and PSG subjected the players to workplace bullying.
Considered one of the most talented French players of his generation, Ben Arfa joined PSG in 2016, but after scoring twice in a Coupe de France quarter-final in April 2017, he never played for PSG again to the end of his contract in June last year, an exile of nearly 70 matches.
Why? Seemingly because the midfielder offended PSG’s president by criticizing him in front of the club’s owner, Ben Arfa’s lawyer Jean-Jacques Bertrand said.
“It was very banal, especially since it was said without malice,” Bertrand said in an interview.
“The aim is to make him crack,” Bertrand said. “The club did everything to push him to leave.”
The suit seeks 7 million to 8 million euros (US$7.89 million to US$9.02 million) from PSG in lost earnings and a symbolic 1 euro in damages for workplace harassment, he said.
Contacted for comment, PSG said they expect to be vindicated, and “regret” what they called the “stubbornness” of Ben Arfa and his attorney.
Ngamukol’s suit, backed by the players’ union, was filed on Tuesday with a Reims local court. It argues that the club sought to exert “psychological pressure” to make him agree to an early end to their contract, and accuses the coach and general manager of Reims of workplace harassment, which is punishable in France by up to two years imprisonment and 30,000 euros in fines.
The Reims newspaper L’Union quoted club president Jean-Pierre Caillot as saying: “We wanted to free him from his contract so he could continue on his path elsewhere. He didn’t understand that. We don’t harass or discriminate against anyone.”
The rules that govern French soccer allow clubs to temporarily send first-team players to train in separate groups, and coaches can field who they want in first-team matches.
However, the players’ union said that French clubs are abusing the system and have growing numbers of “lofters” on their books.
By its count, 145 players in Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 — more than 10 percent of the total player workforce in France’s top 40 clubs — have been parked, more or less permanently, on clubs’ sidelines this season.
Some simply are not playing well enough to be in their clubs’ first teams, but there are also others being punished because of disputes, and some young players on their first professional contracts have been parked while their clubs are waiting to sell them, the union said.
The highest-profile player in the doghouse this season is PSG’s Adrien Rabiot.
Reportedly because he has refused to sign a new contract, the club have not fielded Rabiot since December last year, punishing themselves as well as him, because the 23-year-old’s skills and presence have been sorely missed in PSG’s vulnerable midfield.
“The impression, once again, is that football is a legal no-man’s land,” Terrier said.
Ngamukol hopes his suit might change that.
“It’s a collective issue. There are many other players going through this and we have to say: ‘Stop,’” he said. “It is not easy, but I want my kids to be proud of me and you have to uphold your dignity.”
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