And so it has proved. Brobbey, 24, has been at the heart of the Premier League\u2019s surprise success story this season<\/a>, playing an integral role in helping Sunderland keep in touch with the Premier League\u2019s pacesetters. They are 11th in the 20-team table after 26 of the 38 games, but in points terms are still in the hunt for European qualification.<\/p>\n \n Brian Brobbey has made a big impact at Sunderland (Stu Forster\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n His leading role is all the more impressive given the strange and troubling story that has hung over his career since 2022.<\/p>\n Brobbey is completely innocent of any wrongdoing, but found himself at the heart of a case that involves a notorious gangster, a near-fatal shooting and an alleged extortion attempt on him.<\/p>\n Only last summer, around three months before Brobbey\u2019s move to Sunderland, did it become a matter of public record in the Netherlands, following an extensive investigation by crime correspondent Paul Vugts for the newspaper Het Parool.<\/p>\n The Athletic has collaborated with Vugts and Het Parool to tell that story in full, using his original reporting<\/a> \u2014 based on multiple sources with knowledge of the affair \u2014 as well as details of the shooting case in a publicly-available court document<\/a>.<\/p>\n Brobbey was named by Het Parool for the first time in June after his identity was revealed in a court hearing, with the newspaper\u2019s reporting subsequently picked up by other media outlets. The Athletic is naming him here on the basis that it is only by fully exposing extortion claims \u2014 how and why certain individuals are targeted, and what the impact can be on the victim and those around them \u2014 that it can be properly combated.<\/p>\n An unwitting victim in this affair, Brobbey\u2019s story is sadly typical of how the worlds of footballers and criminals in Amsterdam often overlap, and asks questions of how clubs respond to the pressures facing their highest-profile employees.<\/p>\n In December 2022, Brobbey\u2019s life changed.<\/p>\n He was attending a techno music festival called Valhalla in Amsterdam, his home city and where he had returned five months earlier, rejoining Ajax after a difficult spell at German club RB Leipzig.<\/p>\n As the evening of December 17 blurred into the next morning, Brobbey was approached by a man the Dutch court called Jeymon A, a local criminal also known as \u2018Piccalo\u2019, who asked to walk with him to a place where they could talk.<\/p>\n The pair had grown up in Zuidoost, a suburb in eastern Amsterdam that has produced many footballers<\/a>. Though they knew each other by sight, Brobbey did not know anything else about him.<\/p>\n The court would later hear that Jeymon A was a \u201cripper\u201d, the slang name given to a drug thief and dealer, who could easily get his hands on firearms. By the age of 13, he had a criminal record that was more than 20 pages long. In September 2024, he was sentenced to almost nine years in prison for directing drug dealers connected to the cocaine baron, Jos Leijdekkers, who remains a fugitive after being sentenced to 24 years behind bars in absentia as part of the same case.<\/p>\n Jeymon A told Brobbey that Moroccan criminals in Utrecht, a city 50km south-east of Amsterdam, were looking for him, but he had solved the problem and it would be reasonable if the player compensated him accordingly.<\/p>\n Brobbey responded by saying that he rarely visited Utrecht, insisting that he did not know any Moroccans who lived there.<\/p>\n The music-festival encounter ended there, but Brobbey later related Jeymon A\u2019s story to a childhood friend. As a wealthy professional footballer, Brobbey was used to being approached by opportunistic strangers, but after supplying a photograph of Jeymon A to his friend, he hoped the issue would blow over.<\/p>\n It didn\u2019t. The following month, in January 2023, fireworks were dropped through the letterbox of Brobbey\u2019s mother-in-law\u2019s home in Zuidoost.<\/p>\n \n Zuidoost has produced many footballers, including Brian Brobbey (Simon Hughes\/The Athletic)<\/p>\n Two months later, on March 18 or 19, an explosive was thrown at a car belonging to Brobbey parked in Zuidoost. On March 19, he was not in the starting XI as Ajax lost 3-2 to Feyenoord, a result that proved to be pivotal in the race for that season\u2019s Dutch title.<\/p>\n Initially, police believed the attack on Brobbey\u2019s car to be intimidation from hooligans associated with Feyenoord, the Rotterdam club who are Ajax\u2019s fiercest rivals<\/a>. Only later was it linked to the alleged extortion.<\/p>\n Then, on April 14, Brobbey\u2019s sister-in-law had her car set on fire in Zuidoost.<\/p>\n Three months later, after Brobbey and two of his three brothers played padel<\/a> with the childhood friend with whom he had originally discussed his problems, the friend contacted Jeymon A on Snapchat to set up a meeting in Zuidoost.<\/p>\n When Jeymon A showed Brobbey\u2019s friend something on his phone, he pulled out a firearm. According to witnesses, Jeymon A fired at Brobbey\u2019s friend at least three times as he tried to flee. As the friend stumbled, one bullet hit him in the buttock and pierced his small intestine.<\/p>\n The friend was able to drive to a local police station. From there, he was taken to a hospital to have emergency surgery, saving his life. Police found the friend\u2019s blood-soaked clothes, as well as three bullets and cartridges, but Brobbey\u2019s friend refused to tell the authorities anything about the attack when questioned.<\/p>\n A tip from the Dutch Criminal Intelligence Team, however, quickly identified Jeymon A as the shooter and police established, partly through the use of listening devices, that he had been in the vicinity of the crime at the time of the attack. With the police following communications from people believed to be involved, Brobbey\u2019s childhood friend sent a message to an associate saying that he \u201ctook a bullet for him (Brobbey).\u201d<\/p>\n Other conversations included mentions of a \u201cG\u2019tje\u201d \u2014 Dutch slang for a Glock pistol, the type the friend was shot with \u2014 as well as a claim from the friend\u2019s mother (obtained by police through a wiretap) that the incident was carried out to increase pressure on Brobbey.<\/p>\n A week or so after the shooting, Brobbey received a text message revealing that it was now known that he was living in Amstelveen, to the south of Amsterdam. He was told he had to pay \u20ac150,000 (\u00a3130,000; $180,000) by the end of the month \u2014 otherwise, the message read, \u201cwe\u2019re going to do it differently\u201d.<\/p>\n There is no evidence that Brobbey ever paid the money and the shooting of his friend proved to be the last violent incident connected to him.<\/p>\n Jeymon A was arrested on unrelated charges of directing drug dealers, and was sentenced to nine years in prison in September 2024. Two months later, he received another term of no less than 10 years for the attempted manslaughter of Brobbey\u2019s friend, as well as possession of a firearm and possession of more than 1.6 kilograms (3.5lb) of MDMA, an illegal psychoactive drug, he had stored in a bag in his gas-meter cupboard. He was never charged with extortion.<\/p>\n According to police and club sources, who spoke to Vugts for his original report on the condition of anonymity to protect their positions, it was only after the shooting in July 2023 that certain figures at Ajax discovered what was happening to one of their players.<\/p>\n The club promptly contacted a detective who, alongside a colleague, regularly provides information and hosts \u201cawareness talks\u201d for footballers, urging the importance of keeping away from criminals.<\/p>\n For over a decade, Ajax have been attempting to educate the club\u2019s young players about the dangers of being drawn into criminality. During presentations, detectives stress that sometimes even innocent contacts and favours can have unforeseen but significant consequences.<\/p>\n \n Brian Brobbey came through the youth system at Ajax (John Thys\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n On this occasion, detectives came to the club for a talk with Brobbey and his agent, Jose Fortes Rodriguez, but the striker did not want to report the case to the police after discussions with his relatives. He was concerned that things would only get worse. He was aware of the street code in Zuidoost, which dictated that you never talk to the authorities.<\/p>\n Yet detectives investigating the shooting and, by extension, the alleged extortion as a possible motive met Brobbey at Amsterdam\u2019s Schiphol Airport in October 2023. He was returning with the rest of the Ajax squad and staff following a 1-1 draw with AEK Athens in the Europa League, and the detectives confiscated his phone.<\/p>\n Brobbey was indignant \u2014 he suspected the details of his conversation with the two detectives at Ajax had been passed on, although the officers who spoke to him at the airport insisted that was not the case.<\/p>\n According to police and club sources, Ajax became aware of Brobbey\u2019s conversation with the police at the airport, although the news did not reach the club\u2019s directors. Middle-ranking executives felt that the issue had been resolved.<\/p>\n The club offered Brobbey support but with the player considering it a private matter, they saw no reason to get more involved, provided he continued to train well and there were no further concerning developments.<\/p>\n In the two seasons when the alleged attempted extortion was believed to be taking place \u2014 2022-23 and 2023-24 \u2014 Brobbey scored 14 and 22 goals, the most productive seasons of his professional career. In contrast, in the season Jeymon A was sent to prison (2024-25), his form slumped and he managed just eight goals in 44 appearances.<\/p>\n Internally, the matter received little attention at Ajax. This was partly because the player himself was not raising it as an issue, but also because many of the staff who knew what had happened between December 2022 and July 2023 had left by then \u2014 part of the natural churn of executives that happens at most big football clubs. It had been a particularly tumultuous time at Ajax<\/a>, with many senior personnel coming and going.<\/p>\n Precious little about the case was also being made public. At the first formal hearings, the possible motive for the shooting \u2014 Brobbey\u2019s alleged extortion \u2014 was not mentioned by the public prosecutor. Neither was Brobbey\u2019s name, protecting him from media attention.<\/p>\n The details of the alleged extortion case \u2014 again, excluding Brobbey\u2019s name \u2014 were provided in the criminal file, however, so that the court could have as complete a picture as possible of what had happened and why.<\/p>\n On November 9, 2024, the presiding judge mentioned Brobbey\u2019s extortion as a motive for the shooting. Vugts, who had been tipped off that the player\u2019s name would be cited, made sure he was in court to hear it.<\/p>\n \n Brian Brobbey playing for the Netherlands\u2019 under-17s against their Turkey counterparts in 2018 (Laurens Lindhout\/Soccrate\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n After Brobbey\u2019s name was cited, Vugts contacted the striker\u2019s lawyer, Leon van Kleef, to inform him of his intention to report it. Van Kleef persuaded him and Het Parool to anonymise Brobbey, arguing that publishing the article could harm him in the middle of a Dutch title race. The paper agreed to only refer to \u2018an Ajax player\u2019.<\/p>\n In June last year, with Ajax\u2019s season over, Het Parool named Brobbey, believing his story, as explained in its reporting at the time, \u201craises questions of principle and justifies extensive reconstruction\u201d. For his part, Vugts, who has covered numerous such cases around the Amsterdam organised-crime world, believes that only by shining a light on extortion and its consequences can it be eradicated.<\/p>\n Brobbey and Jeymon A were invited to contribute towards that reporting but Van Kleef stated that his client did \u201cnot wish to cooperate with this publication in any way\u201d.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, on behalf of Jeymon A, lawyer Veerle Hammerstein said: \u201cAs Het Parool knows, my client was convicted of a shooting incident in 2023 and two other facts, which are not related to this incident. An appeal has been lodged against this ruling but a substantive hearing has not yet been scheduled.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough the blackmail of Brian Brobbey is mentioned in the file as a possible reason for this shooting incident, further investigation by the police has not yielded any evidence that my client was involved. He was never prosecuted for this type of extortion practice.\u201d<\/p>\n It was more than two months after the revelations around Brobbey\u2019s alleged extortion, in September, that he joined Sunderland on a five-year contract.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages-2249048778-scaled.jpg\")
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