Nigerian age 'crisis'....

[BartonRaz]

I don't know if any of you had heard of this before. I had, and decided to check it out, and found some crazy information.

Apparently most nigerian footballers seem to be lying about their ages to presumably have longer careers. Interesting blog here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010 ... ld-problem

Obafemi Martins - claims to be 25 but is 32.
Kanu - claims to be 33 but is 42.
Taribo West - claims he is 36 but is 52!!! Wikipedia also claims he is 52.

[PhilM2]

Surely, if the manager is happy with the performance then the age is irrelevant ?

[DiamondsFan]

Surely, if the manager is happy with the performance then the age is irrelevant ?

Article also states that older players were used in the U17 and U20 world cup squads though, and when wrist scanning was introduced to estimate the age they were pretty much all omitted from the squads.

African football is so corrupt it's unreal.

[jimbobjaw]

Surely, if the manager is happy with the performance then the age is irrelevant ?

I couldn't agree more tbh. Apart from age squads, it should not make a difference, and think its great that some of these players can still play at such an age.

Pretty sure a similar things has been going on in Indian and Pakistani cricket for years, although that's because iirc, most of them don't actually know their birth dates!

[BartonRaz]

Apparently Taribo West was playing in the nigerian premier league for 7 years before he played for the U20's.

He was playing English football until very recently, how can he play in this country at that age?

[davealbon]

I don't know if any of you had heard of this before. I had, and decided to check it out, and found some crazy information.

Apparently most nigerian footballers seem to be lying about their ages to presumably have longer careers. Interesting blog here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010 ... ld-problem

Obafemi Martins - claims to be 25 but is 32.
Kanu - claims to be 33 but is 42.
Taribo West - claims he is 36 but is 52!!! Wikipedia also claims he is 52.

I would take those ages with a considerable pinch of salt, however, it is sadly all too common for African players to lie about their age in order to qualify for age restricted competitions. Ghana won the U20 World Cup last year (the first African nation to win a Football world title at any age group) amid suspicions regarding some of their players, and at most of the recent age restricted tournaments there have been strong allegations about players from various nations, although most of the finger pointing is aimed at Nigeria.

[mattreddan]

Theres also Yakubu who says he was born in 1982 but is apparently born in 1977.

Fair play to them if they're lying, they're not hurting anyone, they're all still good enough for top flight i'd say, they wouldn't get signed if they said they're 42 would they.

I find it hard to believe that Taribo West is in his 50's, that just seems mad, but hes definitely not 36

[Mad Dog]

Theres also Yakubu who says he was born in 1982 but is apparently born in 1977.

Fair play to them if they're lying, they're not hurting anyone, they're all still good enough for top flight i'd say, they wouldn't get signed if they said they're 42 would they.

I find it hard to believe that Taribo West is in his 50's, that just seems mad, but hes definitely not 36

One thing though in the case of age restricted competitions, they're breaking the rules by entering, which is against the spirit of those competitions.

[BartonRaz]

I'm certain Martins is older than 25. He's lost all his pace and has gone from holding down a regular place at Inter Milan to benchwarming for Wolfsberg.

As for Yakubu, i saw that too, hilarious, the day he signed for Portsmouth from Maccabi Haifa his age dropped from 24 to 19.

I've always thought Kanu was older than he is. He's never 33 though. If he is 33 like he claims, he would have played 31 games and scored 9 goals at the age of 13 in the nigerian premier league.

[Harry]

Surely, if the manager is happy with the performance then the age is irrelevant ?

If I were a manager and had splashed out for someone I thought was 25, but was actually 33, I'd be very annoyed.

It's not just a matter of how they are playing at that present moment. The 25 year old has the capacity to improve, the 33 year old will get worse most likely quite rapidly.
The 25 year old has a much greater sell on value.