Cameroonian goalkeeper Maxime Loic Feudjou has gone from savoring the glory of playing with his team at the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil to being trapped in Sudan without getting permission from his club to visit his family back in Douala.

Al Hilal, one of the most popular clubs in Sudan, has retained his passport, forwarded his name to the government authorities in order to prevent him from leaving the country and has failed to pay him, a situation that other foreigners at the team have also experienced.

“Since January they have not paid me my salary (…) My passport is with them and I cannot move from here as I do not have money and the problem is that they (the club) have not done anything to fix it”, confessed Feudjou, who has since boycotted training.

The 26-year-old Cameroonian, who was  substitute goalkeeper for his team at the last World Cup, has been in Sudan for three and a half years and is eager to return to his home in Douala (Cameroon) to see his wife and pay for his son’s medical bill, who, according to his account, is ill.

Feudjou, who in 2009 trained with the second team of Real Zaragoza although he did not join the club, has proposed to the Sudanese team to terminate his contract and allow him leave. Last Saturday he met with the president of Al Hilal where both parties agreed to “terminate the contract”, pay him sum of $ 50,000, although for now, says Feudjou , he has not received even a single penny, which should have been paid on Saturday.

An Al Hilal official , who preferred anonymity, confirmed that the president of the administrative council of the club, Ashraf Sayed al Cardinal , met with the player and offered him three options, two of which were to stay with the team but with some conditions which did not satisfy the soccer player. At the end, he said, they reached an “amicable” agreement to terminate the contract.

To leave Sudan an exit visa is needed, which can only be granted if the company that hires the foreigner gives its approval, a measure that is applied to prevent workers with pending cases from fleeing. The president of the club justifies it by saying that it is “normal” for players to hand in their passports, since “even the Sudanese, and not only foreigners, do it”.

Another foreign soccer player who previously play for Al Hilal, who asks to remain anonymous, points that he also lived a similar situation.

“They (the club) takes your passport when you sign the contract so you do not run,” he reveals by telephone.

“The problem is that they do not know how to respect contracts,” he says, explaining that the club pays the salary “based on the results the team records (…) If the team loses any match, they create problems to foreign players whom they accuse of sabotage “, he adds.

The duo are not only the employees at Al Hilal who have experienced this situation.Brazilian physical trainer Rodrigo Andrade whom the Sudanese outfit hired last January is also a victim. He was recorded saying that he felt as if he was in a “prison” when Al Hilal failed to release his passport when he requested to travel to Cairo in March to see his wife and children.

Andrade situation resulted in a diplomatic problem which was finally resolved at the beginning of May, with the termination of the contract and his departure from the country, thanks to the intervention of the Brazilian embassy and the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“The prison to which I was placed had no fences, no key, no wall, my biggest punishment was paying for the mistake of wanting to take care of my family,” he confessed from the Egyptian capital.

The Brazilian ambassador in Khartoum, José Mauro Couto, who confirmed the facts stated that the treatment given by Al Hilal to Andrade was “cruel”.

Now the technician is in the Egyptian capital after being forced to give up his last salaries and the payment of contractual termination.

According to Andrade , at the airport they tried to stop him from boarding and when he arrived in Cairo he discovered that his suitcases had been opened and thousands of dollars’ worth of training material that he had bought before starting work at Al Hilal stolen.

When reached the Sudanese club denied that they retained Andrade passport document, stating that they fired the trainer because “for his poor performance”, and described his statements as “baseless”.