Council of Southern Africa Football Associations (Cosafa) deserves a pat on the back for coming up with strategies to curb age-cheating at the forthcoming regional junior showpiece in Mauritius.
There is a sickening tendency by some success starved African countries of falsifying players’ ages at junior competitions in quest for quick results.
This tendency has killed African football because by the time the so called young players start featuring in senior national teams, they are already old tired.
In a desperate attempt to stop this malpractice, the players will be subjected to rigorous age-screening exercise.
Cosafa Vice General Secretary Suzgo Nyirenda, our own son who has risen from the ashes of Chitawira Township in Blantyre to become one of the best football administrators in the region, said the task of screening the ages of the players will not be entrusted in member associations such as Football Association of Malawi (Fam).
Most of Cosafa member associations are full of crooks and cannot be trusted and Nyirenda sent a stark warning even to his own member association, Fam.
The screening exercise will involve mandatory Magnetic Resonance Imaging. In the past football associations could easily forge certificates that their players have passed the MRI test and the regional body had no means to cross-check that information.
Nyirenda said there are clinics in Mauritius that will be able to take care of this exercise. It is easier to trace the age of the player because MRI measures bones of a player’s wrist to ascertain one’s age.
My humble plea to Fam is that they must desist from age-cheating. I can recall instances in the past where payers were asked to lie on their ages so that they could feature for junior national teams.
This sickening behaviour has been going on for some time but it failed to register any success. In fact, it has had negative impact on the growth of Malawi football; no wonder decades down the line we are still perennial under achievers.
Fam needs not to take any risk. All the players must undergo MRI test here at home before they even leave for the tournament to avoid embarrassment.
We are fed up with singing songs of embarrassment in football and please you people who even lie through the skin of your lips, for the first time, try to be honest and see beyond this mediocrity.
It was naïve to think that success in football could come through age-cheating because when the hour of truth arrived, it is the whole nation that was embarrassed.
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