For individuals playing professional sports in many nations, soccer can closely resemble a modern day global slave trade. Lacking individual civil and even human rights, the buying, selling and trading of players valued for their labor destroys families, and bears a very strong resemblance to the slave trades which have plagued our planet for thousands of years. In fact, it may be argued that the only difference is that the human cargo being moved about today, without respect for individual civil rights, is that the individuals possess a highly specialized form of labor, rather than the mass, unskilled labor that made up the slave trades in centuries past. Nevertheless, whether labor is skilled, specialized or unskilled, the fact that many soccer players across the world have no say in their employment renders their situations to be akin to enslavement.
Some nations take a very harsh attitude towards their players, with losses in important games resulting in punishments that have been known to include beatings, torture, threats, harm to loved ones, starvation and in the worst cases, death by execution. Unsurprisingly, many soccer players laboring under such harsh conditions seize opportunities to flee their would-be owners, and seek political asylum with favorable host nations whenever opportunities present themselves.