The Cameroonian football association cannot calm down after the recent round of 16 exit at the Africa Cup and the subsequent separation from coach and ex-Bundesliga professional Rigobert Song: 62 players were declared ineligible to play for the im National championship playoffs beginning in March explained – the reason: age fraud and double identities.
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Fecafoot published a corresponding list of names on Monday (to overview), there is also a national player, 17-year-old Wilfried Nathan Doualla from Victoria United, who was part of the “Indomitable Lions” squad at the beginning of the year. Ernest Obama, spokesman for association president Samuel Eto’o, said on Tuesday in the French “L’Equipe“ Detailed statement on the measure: “The current board of the Cameroon Football Association has initiated an extensive clean-up operation. The observation was made that more than 60 percent of footballers playing in Elite One and Elite Two had their age manipulated. (…) The guilty players will be automatically punished (six game ban) and will have to state their true age,” Obama is quoted in the paper. To clarify, it is “worth mentioning that all of these actors are accused of falsifying their identities.”
It is not the first time that the association has tried to take action against false age statements. At the beginning of last year, 21 of 30 players from the squad were banned from upcoming U17 games. In the summer of 2022, Fecafoot summoned 44 players from eight different clubs to a hearing over alleged age or identity fraud. It is said that President Eto’o has made combating fraudulent identities a priority. Meanwhile, Ernest Obama also complained in “L’Èquipe” about the difficult current situation for African players in the prevailing system, which is being exploited by agents and certain parents of players.
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“The decision of European clubs not to bring players over 23 years old from Africa is the main reason for this situation. A player who was not discovered early because there were no youth championships arrives in the first division at the age of 24, 25, 26… It’s already too late for him. The other common case is that of players who start playing in the regional leagues at 23 or 24 years old and by the time they reach the first division they are 28 or 30 years old. Then many people fake their age so that they can get into the cycle and have a chance of being discovered at the age of 20 or 21,” said the association spokesman.
Fake identities are a generic problem in Cameroon, fortunately the government has taken the bull by the horns through various identification campaigns across the country. “Unfortunately, this loophole gave shady officials and some unsuspecting parents a free hand to perpetrate all kinds of manipulation,” Obama is quoted as saying. To counteract the phenomenon, Fecafoot “decided to require all football players from the age of eight to have a computerized national identity card. A way to biometrically register all young football players, making potential identity trafficking more difficult.”
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