In the wake of a stern pronouncement by top shots of Nigeria’s sport’s governing bodies from various states of the federation against age cheating in the sector, an ex-international, Jide Oguntuase has given them many questions to answer.
Sports247 reports that Oguntuase, who played for the Golden Eaglets at Scotland 1989 FIFA U17 World Cup and for the under-23 team at the 1991 Africa Games in Egypt, declared that only long-term planning can solve the scourge of age cheating in Nigerian sports.
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The former winger, who is now a grassroots football coach based in Ikorodu area of Lagos State, made his views known during ‘Hot Seat’ segment of Inside Naija Sports, a live streaming programme on YouTube from 2:15pm every Friday in the studio of Sports247 Naija TV.
While butressing his points, Oguntuase pointed out that many young sports talents from Nigeria are affected by their physical appearances and sizes … when compared to their age mates from Europe.
He posited, “It’s a good step in the right direction to talk about tackling age cheating in Nigerian sports, but can they enforce it? Firstly, when you talk about age cheats, it’s difficult for a coach to know the real age of a player or athlete.
“When you spot a good player, you tell him to give you his real age, but you can’t determine if he’s telling the truth or not. So, how do we know the real ages of athletes?
“Some coaches try to depend on the physical appearance of their players. They try to determine age by looking at the size of each player, but you can’t also rule out the margin of error in this approach.”
The former Julius Berger FC of Lagos sensation, who in 1988 abandoned a course at Yaba College of Technology in order to concentrate on football, charged Nigeria’s sports administrators to fashion a long-term strategy that would make the country have real young talents spotted from secondary schools for various events.
He added, “Any player you see on the field desperately wants to play for the country. That’s why they are ready to falsify their ages in order to get there; mostly through the age grade teams.
“So, the only thing we can do, apart from relying on MRI that is now being used by the NFF, is to arrange games and competitions among secondary schools.
“That’s what Lagos State did some years back with the junior league, and I don’t know why they stopped it. They went back to each school to get official information about the players.
“Although some sports masters and principals may also lie in order to protect their promising talents, there’s a strong possibility that we can get authentic ages of our players in secondary schools.”
Oguntuase ended with a suggestion that Nigeria’s sports authorities across the states and associations must start long-term camping of young athletes who are selected from schools so that they can grow well, in order to withstand their counterparts from advanced countries.
“The issue of size is a major factor that has to be taken into consideration when talking about age cheating. An age-grade national team coach, for instance, will be reluctant to take secondary school students to play the U17 World Cup, because he knows they’ll play against bigger boys from advanced countries.
“Those coming from Europe and America are usually endowed better physically than our boys. That means we can’t win the U17 World Cup with secondary school students.
“So, if we want to remove suspicions about the ages of our players, we have to camp them, feed them well and give them constant training over a very long period of time.
“We have to put them in a special training camp; so that they can start early technical and physical developments. They need to grow broad shoulders at an early age like the Europeans,” Oguntuase emphasised.
