FIFA is taking the hard gauntlet to tackle cheating in youth football.
Now 32 players of the Cameroonian national team have been arrested.
– This spoils our reputation, says the president of the association, Samuel Eto’o.
Age fraud has been a recurring problem in African youth football. In 2017, FIFA decided to move and started requiring all national teams to test their players.
The tests are conducted by examining players’ wrists with a magnetic camera and according to experts, the method can determine their age with 99 percent certainty.
Now Cameroon has ended up in bad weather.
32 fixed players
In the middle of last week, it was announced that 21 of the 30 players who were on the U-17 national team had failed an age test and were in fact too old.
Since then, replacements have been called in, but now many more have also been discovered and the total number now comes to 32.
The scandal surfaced just days before the start of the UNIFFAC Limbe 2023 tournament, a qualifying tournament for the upcoming African U-17 Championship.
Eto’o is upset
Former great player Samuel Eto’o is now president of the Cameroon Football Federation Fecafoot and said in a statement that he had personally asked the federation to be “more strict” with regard to the tests.
– He said we need to put an end to the age-gouging that has historically ruined the reputation of Cameroonian football.
Nothing goes further than that.
Now the captain of the national team, Jean-Pierre Fiala, is fighting against time to find players for the tournament, which starts on Thursday.