Agadez, Niger – The sun is just beginning its afternoon descent, and the desert heat has barely started to roll off the field. Undeterred, a team of footballers takes to the pitch for Tuesday afternoon practice behind the sand-coloured walls and seafoam-green metal doors of a football stadium in the Sahara Desert.
Like players across Niger – and the world – many of these young men, especially from West Africa, have dreams of playing in Europe someday. Some of them have already travelled more than 3,000km (1,864 miles) to get to Agadez, the desert outpost that is home to the AC Nassara football club and a key route for clandestine migration towards Europe.
