All eyes are on Nigeria’s U-20 captain, Daniel Bameyi, who has played every minute of Nigeria’s U-20 World Cup as a defender, but not for a good reason. Heavy questions have surfaced over if the player is attached to a professional team or is part of a wider “corruption”.
While FIFA law does not state that a player needs to be attached to a professional club in order to play in the U-20 tournament, the Yum Yum Football Club seems to not exist at all, with no social media accounts, a website, or any other players attached to them besides Bameyi.
“Sure enough, Yum Yum FC doesn’t exist. It is likely that it was created or invented to make some profit from a transfer. This would explain why there was so much interest in calling him up, even with the senior team” is what was reported by Periódico de España who investigated the club.
“Yum Yum FC” writes to members of the media
On May 30th, Bolavip received an email from a Ismail Musa, who only attached paperwork suggesting that Yum Yum does exist and that Bameyi plays a wide range of positions, and that is why he was selected to the Nigerian squad. Those documents are attached.
The e-mail was from a Gmail account, with the other point of contact being a Yahoo account. According to Own Goal the “scam” in question is to make sure when the player is sold, those involved in Yum Yum can get a percentage of the player’s transfer fee.
“You cannot say very loudly and in public, but there is a powerful pressure group in (Bameyi) favor,” added the anonymous source to local media outlet Own Goal, “He has to play, whatever the cost, because it’s the only way this scam works”.
Stranger still for a young footballer, Daniel Bameyi has very little presence outside of the soccer field, he has an Instagram account which claims to be his official account and only has posts from two days ago, also the last upload is a logo of supposed club Yum Yum FC. Bameyi has only 13 followers.
