Across the globe, there are millions of young children who want to follow in their parents’ footsteps when they grow up, and football is by no means an exception to this rule. Kasper Schmeichel, Daley Blind, Marcus Thuram and Giovanni Simeone are just a few stars who have risen to the challenge of managing the pressure that their family name brings. None however, quite compare to the story of Al-Saadi Gaddafi, the third son of now deceased and former Libya dictator, Muammar Gaddafi.

Unlike his older brother, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who opted to join Muammar’s government, Al-Saadi set out to fulfil his dream of becoming a professional footballer. Having a father who was widely feared throughout Libya due to his authoritarian governing, greatly aided Al-Saadi achieving his life-long ambition.

His footballing experiment began as a 27-year-old in 2000. Al Ahly Tripoli was his first choice, where he was given the captaincy for the club as well as his country. His teammates received rewards for passing Gaddafi the ball, with Toyota Camrys and 500 Libyan dinars (£250) the favoured bonuses. Musbah Shengab, a former teammate of Gaddafi was famously quoted in an interview saying: 

“He was the son of the leader, so you couldn’t play with him as if he was anyone else. He wasn’t what you would call a team player.” 

In addition to the on-field corruption, Al-Saadi continued to act behind the scenes. Only his name could be mentioned by television commentators and officials and opponents were placed on the balancing scale. Decisions were deemed to go Al-Saadi’s way, understandable as he also happened to be the head of the Libyan Football Federation (LFF). Penalties, which were a normality in all fixtures, were routinely taken by Al-Saadi and goalkeepers gifted the forward goals to keep his father from enraging. It is no surprise seeing people were sent to prison for less during Muammar’s reign. Al-Saadi’s next move saw him cross the city to play for Al-Ittihad, where he bought the club, and immediately secured title success. He had achieved a double league triumph whilst becoming national team captain, a fairy-tale story, and the perfect ending to his footballing career in his home nation. Next on the agenda? Europe. 

On the 9th January 2002, The Libyan Arab Foreign Investment Fund bought 5.31 percent of Juventus shares on the stock market. UEFA described it as Muammar Gaddafi ‘taking advantage’ of the clubs ‘stock-market flotation’, the deal was not a coincidence. The then Italian Prime Minister and AC Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi had been in direct contact with Muammar, it had been decided that I Bianconeri would be Al-Saadi’s destination. The past tied Italy and Libya together with the Italians taking over from the Ottoman Empire as their colonisers after their World War One defeat. Libya officially gained sovereign independence in 1951, however the country’s vast reserves were controlled by Western powers. As Muammar gained status and power, he set about demanding renegotiations of oil contracts, threatening to shut off production if foreign companies refused. Libya became the first developing country to secure a majority share of the revenue from its own oil production. However, as time went on, Muammar’s priorities changed. His reign became brutal, murderous and corrupt and the 1988 Lockerbie bombing over Scotland was the final straw. 

Berlusconi remained extremely close to Libya’s dictator throughout this period, with a strong interest in the country's rich oil reserves. He saw the opportunity of Juventus signing Al-Saadi as the perfect political sweetener for the two nations to become strong allies. Remarkably, Marcelo Lippi, the then manager of Juventus, opted against pursuing the signature of Al-Saadi despite the pressures from the Italian president and Libya’s dictator. Berlusconi of course had contingencies in place and soon enough a recipient was found. On the 29th June 2003, Al-Saadi signed for fellow Serie A side Perugia. Luciano Gaucci, the owner of Perugia at the time, was the perfect man for Berlusconi’s mission. An eccentric and outspoken owner who regularly feuded with footballing authorities, attempted to sign a female player and even had his tactics discussed at the European parliament after he threatened to release the Korean Ahn Jung-hwan, apparently for scoring the goal that saw Italy eliminated from the 2002 World Cup.  

Hundreds of fans attended Al-Saadi’s grand unveiling, hosted in the prestigious Torre Alfina, a medieval castle owned by the club’s president. The media’s fascination with Al-Saadi lasted throughout the summer with former teammate Emanuele Berrettoni remembering Al Jazeera film crews showing up every day for preseason training.  

“It was like a reality TV show, but after a while you got used to it. He became a footballer just like the rest of us.” 

Berrettoni recalled an incident when Al-Saadi was suffering from a serious earache and located the phone number of the best doctor in Italy. He took a helicopter the following morning and in half a day did everything he needed to and returned in perfect time for training the same afternoon. His royalty was clear, and the privileges that came with his title were unbounded. Back in April of the same year, an arranged friendly match between Al-Saadi’s former club Al-Ittihad and Barcelona at the Camp Nou underlined the Gaddafi family's influence on the game. A payment of €300,000 ensured Barcelona’s preparations for a crucial league fixture against Valencia were put to one side, and the televised friendly took centre stage. 

Despite Al-Saadi’s luxurious lifestyle whilst at Perugia, which included driving a yellow Lamborghini to training each day, booking the entire top floor of the Brufani Palace Hotel, a five-star hotel with breath-taking views over the city, and frequently flying out the entire team to Hollywood parties, Muammar’s son was not able to apply such glamour to his appearances for the Serie A outfit. Unprepared for the life of professional football, his body kept breaking down. Despite his clear enthusiasm and determination to establish himself as a regular starter for Perugia, which included the hiring of personal trainers Ben Johnson and Diego Maradona, Al-Saadi found opportunities limited and was confined to appearances from the substitutes bench. A three month-suspension soon followed after he tested positive for nandrolone, a performance enhancing drug, during a routine doping check. When he returned, the story was much the same, despite his side languishing at the foot of the table. Manager Serse Cosmi had no use for a forward of such modest ability, until the final ten minutes of a league outing against Al-Saadi’s beloved Juventus. 

Perugia were relegated at the end of the season and although Gaddafi remained for a year in Serie B, he was unable to get a game. A brief stint at Udinese was to follow, however he found himself once again confined to the fringes of his new team. His extravagant lifestyle continued, and the forward’s single appearance came in a meaningless final season fixture against Cagliari with ten minutes remaining of the game. He signed for Sampdoria the following year. The only noticeable thing to come of it was an absurd €392,000 hotel bill he was forced to pay by a court in 2010.

Despite his cravings for the finer things in life, his teammates routinely described Gaddafi as a disarmingly humble individual. At times, his wealth could even be the subject of self-deprecating humour. Salvatore Fresi, a close friend of Gaddafi at Perugia, recalled an old tale he had been told by his former Perugia teammate. 

“He was out having a walk in Rome when he started to feel a bit ill-he had a bad stomach. What was his solution? He walked into a hotel and rented out a room-just to use the toilet. He was worried about asking at a restaurant, so he just paid for a room, did what he had to do and left.”

Not everyone casted his involvement in football, and indeed his character, in such a positive light. Al-Saadi had been accused of rigging games and orchestrating the downfall of a team, Al-Ahly Benghazi, whose fans had disrespected him. The late Franco Scoglio, who managed Libya for a brief spell in 2002, claimed to have been sacked after failing to include the nation’s leader’s son in his teams.

So how was Al-Saadi, a man widely accused of match fixing and corruption, without even taking into consideration his relationship with his father – of whom was guilty of implementing authoritarian regimes across Libya and admitting to the Lockerbie bombing which resulted in the deaths of 270 people - able to launch a career in Serie A? 

Casting our minds back to the notorious Calciopoli scandal that rocked the footballing world and exposed the corruption lying deep within Serie A, underlines the perfect environment Al-Saadi was entering to pursue his career as a professional footballer. Question marks had been hanging around Juventus since the late 1990s and in 2004, following a two-year investigation, club doctor Riccardo Agricola was sentenced to 22 months in prison after he was found guilty of providing erythropoietin (EPO), a performance enhancing drug, to players between 1994-98. In addition to the doping exposures, Italian magistrates were also investigating illegal betting occurring in Italy’s top division and the bribing of referees. In the spring of 2006, the Turin magistrates approached Italy’s football authorities but swiftly realised that the governing bodies were themselves implicated. Then Prime Minister Berlusconi, president and owner of AC Milan, was not in favour of a public investigation of his own club and was one of the big four in the firing line (alongside Juventus, Lazio and Fiorentina). 

Thousands of hours of calls, unearthed via wire-taps across the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons, were leaked in transcript form to Italian newspapers and the scandal dominated Italian football. Reports at the time said leading newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport saw a spike of 50,000 sales a day as new allegations surfaced. On July 4th, 2006, just five days before Italy’s World Cup final triumph against France in Germany, Italian prosecutor Stefano Palazzi called for the four accused clubs to be kicked out of the top flight. Juventus were eventually stripped of their league titles from the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons and were relegated to Serie B, starting the 2006-07 season with a seven-point deduction. Lazio were deducted three points for the upcoming season and were kicked out of the UEFA Cup for 2006-07. Fiorentina saw 15 points stripped prior to the new season, as well as being kicked out of the Champions League, and were forced to play two games behind closed doors. As for Berlusconi’s Milan, a seven-point deduction and a single game being forced to play behind closed doors.    

Al-Saadi had fulfilled his ambitious dream of becoming a professional footballer amidst the corruption that had circulated Italian football. He had accomplished a life-long ambition despite limited success on the field, aided by the power and fear his father was able to exert.

It wasn’t long however, until his dream abruptly ended.

In March 2014, a shaven-headed Al-Saadi Gaddafi sat in a chair, wearing blue prison clothing as he faced a series of cameras. He started off by apologising to the Libyan population. He admitted to the crimes that he had been accused of by the new government, including the murder of footballer Bashir Rayani, a case from 2006. Despite being cleared of charges including murder, deception and threat three years later, Al-Saadi was kept behind bars as a civil war erupted throughout his nation. Authorities in Libya released Gaddafi in September 2021 and he immediately departed on a plane to Istanbul, according to an official source cited by Reuters. 

Little is known about the current whereabouts of Al-Saadi Gaddafi, but one thing remains certain; his rockstar and playboy footballing lifestyle will always be a distant, distant memory. 

Article by Eli Haidari