"Soccer's Lost Boys" is an episode of American television documentary series Vanguard. It investigated the trafficking of local football standouts and the black market football games of Paris. According to Mariana van Zeller, in 2011 there were an estimated 20,000 West African football players stranded in Europe by this trafficking. According to The Guardian, "tens of thousands" of footballers have been trafficked and in 2017 over 100 from Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mali and Togo had been trafficked to Nepal alone. According to Geographical, as many as 15,000 players may be trafficked into Europe every year.
