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Poverty no excuse for cheating
27/07/2004 14:01 - (SA)
The revelations last week by the website newzimbabwe.com about how widespread age-cheating in southern Africa soccer is, brought to mind a well-known joke.
"How old are you?" a foreign visitor in an African country asks a keen footballer.
"My birth age or my soccer age?" replies the footballer.
This is not as funny as it sounds. Age-cheating is a serious problem afflicting the game on the African continent.
Apologists for age-cheating are quick to jump to the defence of the cheats, citing economic factors as the driving force. International clubs are looking for young players, a fact that has initiated a rampant age downscaling across Africa.
Poverty in Africa is well-documented, but it is still no excuse for adopting illegal ways to make a decent living.
If cheating is allowed to persist we might just as well kiss goodbye the validity of the junior and youth competitions sanctioned by the Confederation of African Football (CAF).
CAF is guilty of turning a blind eye to the cheating malady. Over the years, South Africa has complained to the African controlling body about obvious cheating by other countries. The attitude of CAF has been that if the players produce their passports, even if those documents were a few days old, then the authenticity of a player's age cannot be questioned.
Washing their hands
The South African Football Association (Safa) and Orlando Pirates used similar reasoning in the case of star midfielder Bennedict Vilakazi, who Sunday Sun exposed as using a false name and age. Safa washed their hands of the matter by repeating Pirates' argument that what is printed in Vilakazi's ID book and passport cannot be questioned.
Now newzimbabwe.com says the Premier Soccer League player of the year, Tinashe Nengomasha, 22, and SuperSport United's Nicholas Chazika, 20, are old horses who have long
galloped past their youthful ages. The England-based site goes on to say Nengomasha's real name is Tendai, and Chazika only became Nicholas when he joined United last year, after a long pro career as Nyasha in Zimbabwe.
In a relatively developed country like South Africa it's easy to catch cheats because births here are properly registered, but in many other African countries, aspiring soccer stars can emerge from the bush and simply adopt a soccer age far below their real years.
Take the case of Salomon Olembe, for example. The Cameroon international is 23, which means he was 17 when he played in the France World Cup, in June 1988.
Olembe, who last year joined Leeds United on loan from Marseilles, won his first cap for the Indomitable Lions on October 22, 1997. Having been born on December 12, 1980, this means he was just 16 when he ran on to the field in this game.
Officially nothing prevents a player to play for his senior national team at 16, but cases such as Olembe's raise eyebrows, to say the least - especially he is now seriously going bald.
In the US, the soccer world is abuzz with talk about Freddy Adu, a 15-year-old Ghana-born striker who is now a US citizen. A star in the making, Adu is the highest paid player in the major league, but his physique belies his age. If he is 15, it is incredible that he has already been capped at Under-21 level.
Perhaps his is a classic case of rare young genius, just like Pele who set the football world alight in the 1958 World Cup at the age of 17.
Two weeks ago football authorities in Lesotho started a clampdown on not-so-young cheats. Safa are currently investigating a few suspicious cases of Under-12 and Under-17 boys.
It remains to be seen if the rest of Africa is ready to follow suit.
Do you agree? Tell Tumo what you think.
Tumo Mokone is the sports editor for the Sunday Sun.
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