How old are you?

Hey that’s football age?

These days more than anything else, the main issues dominating the headlines from Nigeria is about the so-called scandal surrounding five of the country’s banks and the age cheating wahala as Nigeria prepares to host the junior Under 17 World Cup in October. These issues when put into perspectives points to a continent that has a long way to free itself from troubles and scandals.

No wonder, it makes headlines in The Gambia, because The Gambian team too, would sooner or later undergo such rigorous test to determine the age of the footballers ahead of the Under 17 world cup in Nigeria. The eaglets had to decamp some of their players when it was found out that some of them were more than 17 years old.

Some months ago, while watching the Champions League games, a friend of mine ignited an issue that was never resolved: the African players cutting their teeth in European football are too old and tired. But he failed to closely observe some of the European footballers who looked older than the African footballers he usually criticized.

In Africa
You don’t have to bother yourself to search for clues, a teenager growing up in village playing ‘warga, warga’ hardly attract headlines until he grow bigger in an influential team in the city and that would take close to three to four years. So by the time this poor boy is elevated to the senior team, he would have passed twenty-one if you go by his real age in some cases.





Then another issue crops up again, don’t forget some of the players would want to reduce their ages so that they can play for at least ten years and get all the Euros and dollars in their pocket.
You don’t need to stretch your neck that far, how many players on our screens and say at the back of our minds that these players could be older than his age. Yet, some of them have managed to stay on, but it will somehow dawn on them as they continue to kick the ball, the power would not be there.

So, I have a feeling that FIFA’s age test could finally teach some of us lessons: No matter what happens, let’s get the facts right and maintain the true age of our darling players, sometimes, we have ourselves to blame if anything happen.