As we begin to enjoy the mouthwatering football dished out at the ongoing CAF Under-20 Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) tournament in Egypt, boom, the most depressing news hits us in the face like a clown with a pie.
The only sad thing is that it is not funny at all; in fact, it spoilt the taste and ruined our
excitement.
There is suspicion of age cheating at the youth continental competition, and it has been revealed that a certain country, not very far from Mzansi, has taken overage players to the tournament to gain some kind of advantage.
This is the most disheartening news when you think that it seemed the African continent had learned its lesson and realised that such archaic practices only take us a thousand steps backwards when it comes to growth and progression.
If indeed it is established and confirmed that there’s age cheating at this year’s youth Afcon, those countries involved should suffer the harshest penalties.
They are a disgrace to Mother Africa, and they should be put out to pasture outside the structures of CAF.
Having covered football for more than two decades, I thought that by 2025, we would not have such nonsensical stories.
There was a point when African countries were dominating FIFA junior tournaments and sweeping all the stakes.
You can talk about the Olympic Games, the Fifa Under-20 and Under-17 World Cups and others; Africa was always in the thick of things and achieving amazing feats with their
tiny tots.
But whenever it was time for progression to the senior national teams, there was not much to write home about – the players were somewhat finished, and those national teams could not even reach the semifinals of a Fifa World Cup until Morocco broke the stranglehold in Qatar in 2022.
I remember the year that the MRI scan was introduced; it caused a lot of discomfort and aches for many African countries as they ran helter-skelter.
Fifa began conducting MRI wrist scans at the Under-17 World Cup in Nigeria in 2009, focusing on players’ wrists to calculate their ages.
The scans examine the growth plates in the wrist to assess bone development, which can indicate age, especially before growth is complete.
Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Congo, Ivory Coast, Gambia and Sierra Leone were notorious
offenders from sub-Saharan Africa for many years.
At some point, one infamous country from the west arrived at a tournament with their full squad and when they were informed that MRI scans were to be conducted, two-thirds of the squad were sent back home, and new players flown in.
There have also been several cases in Mzansi in years gone by, and those players
never achieved much and could not take their careers very far.
In fact, by the time they were supposed to be in their prime, nature had taken its course, and the players hit “retirement age” and could not keep up with the pace of professional football.
Receding hairlines were already embarrassing the poor lads, forcing them into “early retirement” when a lot was still expected of them.
So, it begs the question of why MRI scans are not available in Egypt. Are we facing a relapse as a continent because, in the last decade or so, age-cheating was slowly but surely disappearing?
One can only hope that we are not resorting to deceitful and underhanded ways again. It did not yield many results for us in the past, and it will never, ever in the future.
