Published on : 2024/11/28
A German amateur soccer team is trying to help a player from Guinea who has been ordered to leave the country.
This Sunday afternoon Mamady Sylla should be doing what he loves – playing soccer with his team TuSpo Saarn. In a home game in the German city of Mülheim, the first division men are due to battle it out against SV Raadt for the top spot on the district league table.
But Sylla has another battle ahead of him. He recently received an official notice that he is to leave Germany within 30 days or face deportation.
Now his team and coach Felix Maly are rallying around the Guinean to try to help him stay.
Sylla fled to Germany from Guinea last year. The small West African country has been under military rule since 2021. Free speech is widely banned and opposition figures, as well as peaceful demonstrators, have been detained and even unlawfully killed, according to an Amnesty International report published in April.
For legal reasons, Sylla doesn’t talk about his reasons for leaving home, says a report published this week in the newspaper WAZ. “It certainly wasn’t because everything was so great there,” coach Maly told the paper. “It really was a tough situation.”
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‘Hardworking and polite’
Maly and Sylla first met at a different club before trainer and protégé switched to TuSpo together. “He’s someone everyone likes quickly, he’s popular with everyone,” the coach told WAZ. The young soccer player is “hardworking, courteous, polite and committed,” he added.
It didn’t take long for the Guinean to find a community and friends in Germany and, with help from Felix Maly and his wife Katrin, he was able to extend his residence permit and then to get a work permit.
“Now he has a full-time job and recently even got his own apartment,” explained Katrin Maly. He may soon be getting his driver’s licence.
In Germany, despite an emphasis on the value of integration, having a job does not protect non-nationals against deportation. What happens for Sylla now depends on the success of his appeal.
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Fundraiser launched
Coach Maly has hired an asylum lawyer, and says there is a 50 percent chance that the Guinean will be able to stay. “The boy is now completely on the ropes, of course, he’s completely worn out,” Maly told WAZ.
To pay the lawyer’s fees, the club has launched a fundraiser. “We would like Mamady, with his friendly and personable nature, to remain a part of our team,” says the appeal on Instagram.
It’s now a matter of waiting for a final decision on Sylla’s appeal. There has been a strong political move in Germany for people without a residence permit to be removed more quickly, and the government has introduced tougher laws to try to ensure that this happens.
This may be bad for people like Sylla, but it’s also a problem for those around him – his employer, who will be short of a colleague, his friends, and his soccer team, which will be losing something more important than just a weekend match.
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