Peter Pan is a character created by Scottish novelist J.M. Barrie. He is a mischievous boy who can fly and never grows up. Peter Pan spends his never ending childhood on the small island of Neverland.
Part of the lyrics to the song about Peter Pan goes like this;
I will never grow up,
Never grow up, never grow up
Not me, Not I, Not me
Never gonna be a man
I won't
Like to see somebody try
And make me
Anyone who wants to try
And make me turn into a man
Catch me if you can
I won't grow up
I will never grow a mustache ...
With approximately 240 million players all over the globe, football is undoubtedly the number one sport in the world. Huge sums of money have been invested into the sport making it also one of the highest paying careers. Football players are among the world's richest sportsmen and women. Currently, three soccer players, David Becham, Christiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, have been listed among the top ten richest sportsmen while the world's 20 most valuable football teams are worth an average of $968 million.
However, there is one dent in the sport. Age cheating. Many football players are like Peter Pan. They simply don't want to grow up. Their wish is to be young forever and this has been the reason why there is too much age fraud in football.
But why do football players lie about their actual age? It may not be every player that has cheated about his age but many of them have falsified their age.
The BBC reports that the Nigerian Under 17 National Soccer team has lost a number of its members who were to be part of the team at the Under 17 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates due to age fraud. This was after wrist scans showed them to be over the age limit. The players underwent an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imagining) scan to help determine their ages.
It is no secret that African teams are the most notorious when it comes to using overage players in junior championship events. These age scandals have rocked several West African countries mostly Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal in the past few years.
One classical Peter Pan example is that of Cameroon's international football defender Tobie Mimboe who held several documents during the course of his career. These documents indicated that he became younger as time went by.
In the 1999 FIFA under 17 World Championship, Nigeria beat Japan 9-0. After this, Japan's Manager Phillipe Troussier quipped that he saw one of the Nigeria's under 17 players enter a taxi "with his wife and two children and then driving home" implying that Nigeria had fielded over-age players.
Ten years before this, the Nigerian youth national teams were banned by FIFA for fielding over-age players in FIFA organised youth tournaments. The birth dates of three players at the 1988 Olympics were different than the ones used by those players at previous tournaments. The ban lasted two years and Nigeria was stripped of its right to host the 1991 FIFA World Youth Championship.
FIFA introduced mandatory use of MRI in 2009 for the FIFA Under 17 World Cup to ascertain whether players are over-age or not. This showed that age cheating in football was becoming a serious concern.
Every bone in the arm has an end plate from which bones grow. When the growth is completed (usually under the age of 17-18), then this end plate disappears on the MRI scans. MRI is considered to be 99% accurate until the age of 17, after which it becomes harder to calculate a person's age. It is a very good coincidence that FIFA made their competition an Under 17 event.
Democratic Republic of Congo player, Chancel Mbemba was also caught in what I would call an embarrassing age cheating dilemma. He had 4 birthdays and this caused him a lot of problems with FIFA.
Mbemba was part of the Democratic Republic of Congo's squad for the Africa Cup of Nations but before that, confusion over his date of birth almost put an end to his dreams of a career with a top European club.
He was registered by his two first Congolese clubs as being born in 1988 yet for a Cup of Nations qualifier in June 2011, his year of birth was listed as November 30, 1991. Meanwhile, the birth date recorded by his Belgian club Anderlecht was August 8, 1994. As if that was not enough complication already, Mbemba himself, thinks he was born in 1990.
The case of Mbemba can be used as an example of how a lie can ruin a player's career. Giving multiple birth dates can make one look like a fraud or an impersonator until he is fully investigate and the truth found out.
But why do football players take this risk? There are many reasons. One of the reasons is that the idea of playing professional football in Europe holds the promise of a better life. However, in professional leagues, as a player ages, he is perceived as getting closer to being past his prime and clubs tend to be less willing to invest in him. The age of a player is also important for the buying and selling club as it has implications for their salary and future sell value.
Another reason is that some officials are behind this because they want to field a stronger team in youth tournaments and so they bring in older players with fabricated ages.
African Historian Peter Alegi once said, "Almost everyone up and down the commodity chain is involved - from coaches and recruiters to family and the players themselves."
This is absolutely true. These players may not be doing this alone by they are influenced by other people. Football agents are familiar with the player market and they deliberately manipulate it to fit their greedy motives. In short, they upgrade their product by reducing the age of that player.
These agents and officials do not care about the player's future complications because they are just interested about what happens then and the money.
One observer noted that the media in Africa also plays a part. They like to create stars in young players before they peak. This causes players who may be older to also reduce their age because they know younger players will attract more market value and attention. This is why some African players have hit international headlines only to suddenly fade away and never be heard of again.
These players are forced to retire earlier because biologically, in some cases, they are between five or seven years older than their football age suggests, and can no longer cope with the physical toll that the game demands of them .
When FIFA established these junior tournaments, the aim was to prepare young players for the major tournaments especially the World Cup. The junior players were expected to learn at an early age the rigours of international tournaments but African teams are destroying this by using over-age players.
Upcoming talented junior players are denied the chance to play at these tournaments because men are taking their places. Hundreds of players who play in junior national teams have never progressed from the potential shown at age group events simply because of the thorny issue of age cheating.
After Yakubu Ayegbeni scored a hatrick in a EUFA Cup game, Everton manager David Moyes said, "He's only 25, albeit a Nigerian 25, and so if that is his age he's still got a good few years ahead of him."
Surely, the joke is on us.
Image courtesy of Naypong, freedigitalphotos.net
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