Hakimi: African footballers and the trap of foreign wives

Paris Saint-Germain defender, Achraf Hakimi has been in the news all week.

According to reports, his wife Hiba Abouk, had filed for divorce against the Morocco international, laying claim to half of his properties.

However, the Spanish actress is said to have found out that Hakimi’s properties are not in his name, and his net worth is almost insignificant.

Rather, all the 24-year-old’s assets are in his mother’s name, meaning the footballer doesn’t have to pay Abouk anything.

This is rather a familiar story with African footballers.

Zimbabwean footballer, Tendai Ndoro went bankrupt after losing all his properties to his ex-wife following their divorce.

The 36-year-old who registered his properties in the name of his partner, Thando Maseko, lost them all following a messy divorce.

Former Arsenal defender, Emmanuel Eboue almost went bankrupt after a bitter divorce battle in 2017 stripped him of his assets in England.

Eboue was reportedly rendered homeless and struggled to find daily bread, having lost most of his wealth to his ex-wife Aurelie Bertrand, a Belgian woman.

“I had a divorce [case] and they [court] said my wife won, they gave her all my properties – my two houses, money and the cars that I had in England,” Eboue told Empire FM in 2021.

Football is one of the most lucrative industries in the world.

Take for instance, Hakimi. He is the sixth highest-paid African footballer, pocketing a weekly salary of £176,000.

In a month, he could pick up around £1,000,000, when bonuses are added up.

There’s a popular joke on social media that footballers make more than they can spend.

Apart from fortune, there is also fame – a combination that draws women like a magnet.

So you can be forgiven if you turn up your nose when a random lady says she has fallen in love with a player.

More so when the marriage crumbles a few months or years later.

How do these footballers protect themselves then? Is Hakimi’s method the best bet?

“I think players should only explore pre-nuptial agreements rather than this nonsense,” Barrister Kwami Adadevoh, whose legal practice straddles between Nigeria, Ghana and the UK, tells DAILY POST.

It is believed Eboue remarried his childhood sweetheart, Stephanie Boede, when he returned to his home country.

Could that also be an option for footballers, especially those from these parts, to marry from familiar culture?

“No. Not to my mind,” Adadevoh replied emphatically.