His classmate at primary school and teammate while they played colts is now 26 and a TV Sports Presenter, here in Accra; but, he is still a boy playing Under 17 for Ghana and is 14 years. If that has not aroused your curiosity enough, what about this other Under 17 player whose twin brother is a 28-year-old married with two kids? There is this story of Enoch Teye Mensah, then Minister or Secretary of Sports, who had to shout at an Under 17 player who had yanked off his top jersey, after his side banged in a great goal. As the tale goes, the guy’s chest hair was thicker than rainy season grass, with the black dotted with a few grey. “Come on, Wo otade[; ole ak[ obaa hani am] w] lo? Buulu!” Oh, what a football age! More crucially, what do we hope to achieve?
Why age cheating
In the quest for answers to this question, I gleaned the minds of a few sports journalists within my reach: 1) It can give chance to some of those who would have otherwise been unqualified to play in the national junior teams. 2) That can be a stepping-stone to play in such big teams as Real Madrid, Juventus, Bayern Munich, and Chelsea FC. 3) If you slash your age, you can hope to play longer than you would have otherwise been allowed to by your clubs and national team. Some are lucky to get this wish. 4) If not for anything at all, longevity on the field of play can keep you fit for longer time than the average player. 5) If you cheat your way through by slashing your age, and you get a foreign club to sign you on; you are exposed to the big world of soccer with all the affluence, exquisite cars, celebrity, hero worship and others that playing in Europe, America, China or even North Africa comes with. 6) With stronger bones, intellect and experience, cheating players may outshine those on the field as actual teenagers. 7) Nations that collude in this grand deceit can reap handsome, albeit fleeting, benefits: sweet victories over their archrivals, fame in the comity of soccer nations, and lifting coveted ultimate trophies. You could add to them.
Cut your nose,…
But, of course, there are disadvantages: a) Ask coach Syllas Tetteh, a.k.a. Borboor, and he will tell you that, when we won the World Under 20 in Egypt 2009, those who were not terribly over-age progressed to become global stars. Dede Ayew, Agyeman Badu, and very few others who were – indeed 20 years or less – could develop their career. At the same time, such others as Ransford Osei, Opoku Agyemang, and Kwame Adiyea who seemed to hold so much promise, soon fizzled out. They wasted away warming the benches of foreign clubs, after they had delayed their apex performance with junior teams of those clubs. Eventually, they were all dumped.
Rewind back to Ecuador ‘95. Of the star-studded team that included Bashiru Gambo, Baba Sulley, Emmanuel Bentsil, Abu Iddrisu, Joseph Ansah, Kamara Diini, goalkeeper Michael Abu, Awudu Issaka and Stephen Appiah; only the last lived up to the promise he showed. Indeed, Appiah rose to become the Black Stars captain and he remains one of the most respected people to have ever donned the prestigious senior national team jersey. What most of the others got from Sam Arday’s Multi-system was all that they displayed in Ecuador to win us the 1995 U-17. The scenario kind of looked like cutting your own nose to spite your face.
Even though the gem of the tournament, Awudu Issaka, continues to blame their shocking decline on ingratitude showed a spiritualist who allegedly helped them annex the ’95 trophy; that cannot be proven by any empirical evidence. Neither does that explain why a few among them – including Stephen Appiah – progressed into real stardom. They sowed a wind of dishonesty; they reaped a whirlwind of rapid fall. And, I guess, Coach Arday attests to that.
India ‘17
There should be no tears whatsoever for us over our humiliation, last Saturday, by the Malian U-17. We were fraudulent in our line-up. Coach Kwesi Fabin’s claim that goalkeeper Danlad Ibrahim was kind of traumatised by the series of queries raised about his age was as dishonest as virtually all the proffered ages of the players were a grand deceit. Paa Fabin would be hard put picking from his last squad of Danlad Ibrahim, Najeed Yakubu, Alhassan Rashid, Gideon Mensah, Abdul Razak Yusif, Ibrahim Muhammed, Sulley Ibrahim, Mohammed Kudus, Gabriel Levey, Eric Ayiah and Emmanuel Toku, a single one who was below, or even exactly, 17 years.
Equally dishonest Mali were paid what they deserved in the 3-1 walloping by Spain. While European referees, coaches, audiences and sports journalists have their condemnable biases against Africans, it begs the question as to whether Europeans are not more honest than us when it comes to the actual ages of our players. If, therefore, England beat Brazil 3-1 and the Brits face the Spanish in the final, it can only be said to be a fair final match.
Africa’s age-cheating notoriety
It is not nice washing and drying one’s dirty linen in the open; it can however heal a deadly cancer: let us therefore boldly do it. As a continent, we are too notorious for cheating with age. One of the best known examples of a player falsifying documents is Cameroon’s international football defender, Tobie Mimboe, according to information on the net. This man is reported to have held several documents during the course of his career that indicated he became younger as time went by. Can you imagine!
In 1989 Nigeria’s 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 from the ones used by those same players at previous tournaments. The resulting ban lasted for two years and Nigeria was also stripped of its right to host the 1991 FIFA World Youth Championship.
South African journalist, Thomas Kwenaite, uncovered several “age-cheats” representing South Africa who participated in an Under-15 age group tournament hosted in France. The captain of that side was a 24-year-old third-year university student from Port Elizabeth. After Kwenaite revealed the age of the player, the player’s father took the journalist to the South African press ombudsman for “slander” before withdrawing his complaint after school records showed that the player would have started school aged 2 years old. Kwenaite also claims that he was told that he was “unpatriotic” for reporting the story. (Source: Wikipedia.)
Urgent retreat
We cannot do the same thing repeatedly and expect different results. We need to beat a retreat. And, in that connection, one name crops up very useful: Ben Kwofie. This ex-Hassacas and Black Stars player who travelled abroad to coach clubs and national teams was invited in or about 2001 by President Agyekum Kufuor to chair the Ghana Football Association. He soon set out to break the jinx of football age. He ensured all those who played in our Starlets, Satellites, Meteors and the Black Stars were within the prescribed age ranges. Yes, the twinkling twinkling little boys received repeated drabbing; but, we should have waited for the project to reach its gestation period. No, sports journalists, serial callers and all-knowing commentators hounded the government into booting out Ben Kwofie. Back to square one; we have since been groping in the soccer wilderness.
Sports Minister, Isaac Kwame Asiamah, may have to refresh his memory on the Ben Kwofie tragedy. President Akufo-Addo, who, himself, likes soccer so much that he played for the University of Ghana in his youth, is implored to do all it takes to get the Ben Kwofie policy cleaned, rehashed, and implemented to its logical conclusion. We the 28 million odd coaches in this country should bear with the authorities to nurture the policy to fruition.
Nurture @ nurseries
The old Nkrumah policy that ran through the Busia and Acheampong regimes should also be brought back. Let’s stop erecting buildings on school sports fields. Let us begin nurturing our future stars in Colts Soccer Leagues b) Let high school soccer competition be revived with all the keenness it used to command; so the Academicals Team can bounce back in its form of yesteryears. c) The tertiary institutions, clubs and soccer academies should compete even more keenly so the best materials are groomed in the Black Meteors. Experienced and exceptionally good young ones in the clubs should, then, be invited into the Black Stars.
Alongside the above, you can still pick from the second-cycle schools and dropouts to fill the Starlets and Satellites. Do this as an article of faith; and, we will see whether you still need to go global-trotting to pick over-age Ghanaians warming the benches of second division foreign teams to come and lose matches for us.
Soccer passion
Soccer brings Ghanaians together. The same soccer passion can consume all Ghanaians, if you continue to handle it carelessly. A deep and wide topic; Ghana Today will return to the subject matter soon. For now, stop the football age mentality. It is as scandalous as it is criminal!
Ghana Today
…with A. C. Ohene
