Age scam rocks female U-17 camp

Maigari

Following the threat from the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) to deal with any player who falsifies his or her age to qualify for the underage teams, four players have fled the camp of the female Under-17 team, the Flamingos, in Abuja this week.

Member of the executive committee of the board, Barrister Chris Green, said in Abuja recently that the players took to their heels as the federation insisted that all the players in camp must provide their authentic birth certificate or a verifiable age declaration.www.mannastores.com

Previewing the 2012 football year, the technical committee boss said: “Nigerians must be patient and watch us make and correct our mistakes. The pressure is just too much on the federation to win at all cost. Sometimes they push us into doing things we ordinarily ought not to do.”

“What we are doing now is to put a solid structure on ground to develop our football. We have started it with the underage teams. For example, four players ran away from the Under-17 female camp because we insisted that the players must provide their age certificate.

“We also warned those who brought age declaration that if we found out that they were not within the age range, we would prosecute them. Again, we cannot completely eradicate it because we are not their parents. The good thing is that the ones around have the semblance of Under-17 and most of them have not played for any club.

“They were all greenhorns spotted during the National Sports Festival. If we can drill and use them, they might automatically graduate to Under-20. Some players in the Spanish national team played in the Nigeria 1999. We have to evolve a pattern to adopt and play. We have to resolve whether to adopt Brazil style or combination of Africa and European style,” he noted.