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Innocent Kurira, Sports Reporter
THE age cheating saga that marred the Marvelous Nakamba Foundation Under-17 tournament at the weekend, was a clear indication of the extent of the rot in junior football development.

Age cheating is not new in the local scene, especially in junior football.

Chronicle Sport can reveal that it was not only Dynamos who used overaged players in the inagural edition of the Marvelous Nakamba Under-17 tournament.

Dynamos juniors were chucked out of the competition after it was discovered that they had a number of overaged players in their squad.

While Dynamos were singled out, it appears more teams had overaged players in thier squads too.

Zimbabwe national teams’ general manager Wellington Mpandare, who attended the tournament, said he was dissapointed that some teams choose to cheat.

“I am really disappointed as the general manager of national teams. I have seen a lot of players that are not even eligible to play for the Under-20s playing in this tournament. It defeats the whole purpose of having the tournament,” Mpandare said.

“Otherwise it was supposed to be called an Under-23 competition because some of the players were born in 2001 and 2002. I have names and the chief culprits are Dynamos, who have players like Dylan Gumbe, who caused the national Under-17s to be disqualified from Cosafa and he is still here. This was in 2020 and he was not eligible to play, but he is here again in 2022 still seeking to play for the Under-17s. We can’t get anywhere with this kind of age cheating.”

“Coaches should be encouraged to use the right aged players not what we are seeing here. These overaged players should be competing in the senior team not at junior level.

We have players that should be playing in this competition, but they are deprived of that opportunity. We have coaches and scouts that want to see Under-17 players not these old players that have failed before. and have been tried and failed and are now old. From Dynamos there were about six players that l know very well.

“I even know their fathers and their fathers are even former players, which is dissapointing.

Nakamba came up with a brilliant idea to have this competition, but this is now tarnishing the image of Nakamba Foundation by bringing overaged players. The system is wrong from the parents to the coaches. The coaches are all to blame for this problem.

l know for starters where these kids were learning. If we are to call one player here and ask them when they started Gade 1, you will be shocked. Some of these boys finished their Form 4 about three years ago but they are still Under-17. At this level coaches should not be looking for results, but development of players. The desire to win at all costs is why we have overaged players bieng used in competitions such as this one.”

Mpandare said there was a need to even involve the police to help curb age cheating.

“We have to come down heavily and even involve the police because there is someone at the registery office that is helping these boys. It’s easy to see that. People must be arrested for this,” he said.

Zifa technical director Wilson Mutekede also weighed in on the matter saying they were hoping domestic tournaments would lay a foundation for development since the country is under a Fifa suspension, but these efforts are being undermined by age cheating.

“There’re a lot of people involved in this. If it’s not the kid, it’s the coach who goes to an office and gets this done. As long as as these things go unpunished, we are going to erode the game. We need to have Home Affairs coming hard on this and make sure this is stopped,” said Mutekede.

Age cheating has become a cancer that has been tolerated for long, albeit with dire consequences.

Primary and secondary schools around the country are where age cheating starts from just for the glory.

The quest to win tends to override the value of athletes’ development in schools.

World football governing body Fifa has in recent years encouraged and supported participating member associations to conduct their own Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) tests in the build-up to youth tournaments in order to ensure that players are compliant with the age limit. — @innocentskizoe