It’s not unusual for a French striker to be surrounded by microphones upon arrival into Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. In their time, our friend Thierry Henry has gone through passport control aware that it was only a matter of time before he’d be mobbed by the media vultures, whilst Karim Benzema, of the new kids on the block, is liable for comparable treatment. The French love their football. It is what happens. The price of fame.

Zahir Belounis never could have expected such treatment, that he would be met by a swarm of media at an airport; certainly not for his playing exploits.

For years he spent his time playing in the lower divisions of the French and Swiss leagues until, in 2007, he was offered what, on his moderate career graph, must have seemed a licence to print money when Qatari side El-Jaish courted him to move to the Gulf State.

What happened thereafter is a cautionary tale, and one which doesn’t reflect too well on a country which will play host to the 2022 World Cup.

Up to nine days ago, Belounis – a 33-year-old striker who had even taken out citizenship which enabled him to represent Qatar in the 2011 world military games in Rio de Janeiro – was effectively trapped in Qatar with his wife and their two daughters.

He was refused the exit visa he needed to leave because of a legal dispute over unpaid wages with his club, where he was under contract until 2015. An employment law system known as the Kafala ensures that every foreign worker is bound to their employer and workers are not allowed to leave their job, or even leave the country to go home, without permission.

Unpaid wages
Belounis's plight was a grim one. He took the club through the Qatari legal system in an attempt to reclaim his unpaid wages and the club's response was to use the Kafala to leave him stranded. For 17 months.

His efforts to leave Qatar fell on deaf ears. He wrote an open letter to Zinedine Zidane and Pep Guardiola – ambassadors for Qatar’s World Cup in 2022 – seeking their support to get him home. He even considered going on hunger strike.

FIFPro, the association which looks after professional footballers internationally, took up his cause and offered the Belounis family – who were living in an unfurnished apartment – financial assistance from its hardship fund. FIFPro claims that the Kafala system “is causing great injustice” and has made it a priority to get it changed. After almost 18 months trapped in no man’s land, unable to play and with his wages stopped, Belounis, in desperation, hatched an escape plan aimed at getting his family home to France. In the end, he didn’t need it.

On Wednesday, November 27th, he got a phone call out of the blue telling him he could leave if he signed a document confirming his sacking and forfeiting the unpaid wages and those future wages due to him in a contract that extended to 2015. The next day, he flew into Charles de Gaulle airport.

In midweek he told the BBC: “I still don’t know who made the decision to free me. All I know is that when I got the call, I grabbed my wife and my two daughters and we went to the airport. I will never forget that 24 hours. I didn’t sleep. I held my daughters close. It was so intense and I didn’t believe I would really get out, even as I went to the airport. I didn’t believe it until I heard the noise of the stamp. When I heard that, I knew I was free.“

He was not the first footballer to fall victim to the system. Earlier this year, the former Moroccan international Abdeslam Ouaddou told the FIFPro’s website that he had been “treated like a slave” in his dispute with a club there.

Last month, Amnesty International produced a report which claimed workers were being treated “like cattle”. Human Rights Watch has labelled the system to be abusive.

Human rights
FIFPro's Brendan Schwab has highlighted the problems faced by players like Belounis. "If Eastern Europe and Western Asia . . . are going to be rewarded with the great events and great honours of hosting the World Cups, we think it's very important that universal human rights standards apply, and more modestly, that the standards agreed between Fifa and FIFPro apply in every country in which professional football is played," said Schwab.

Belounis started his professional career with the dream of achieving success, of being a star, like Henry, who was feted and surrounded by microphones. Now, he has become an unlikely voice seeking change.

As he told the BBC: “I heard that maybe Qatar will change the rules for footballers and maybe they will cancel the Kafala system. But for me, the value of a football player and a worker is the same. If you cancel the system for a football player, you need to cancel it for everybody.“