Joe Tagoe’s confession

BECAUSE of the rapidly changing times, traditional values that harp on integrity as a core pillar of personal conduct may be going out of fashion. Still, they hold self-evident truths that society can only trifle with or abandon at its own peril. In particular, the saying that honesty is the best policy illustrates the primacy of plainness in societal dealings, as the story of former Hearts of Oak midfielder Joe Tagoe, popularly known as Bobby Short, brings out most poignantly. Now in retirement, the Ghanaian football great recently admitted to falsifying his age during his football career, relating how his actions cost him so dearly.

As Tagoe revealed during a television interview, in a bid to escape the poverty trap, he had reduced his age from 35 to 19 in 2017 to secure a spot with an Egyptian under-19 team. Indeed, in a desperate bid to hide his age, the midfielder dyed his grey hair daily, but as it turned out, he could not withstand the intense pressure of the game, and had to quit. Hear him: “I was home and received a call from Francis Martey (a fellow footballer) about an offer for an under-19 player. Looking at my height, I said okay. At that time, I was about 34 or 35 years old. Poverty can make you do such things, and the system isn’t fair to us. I would have died if I hadn’t taken care of myself. I trained with both the senior team and U-20s, but the running with the U-20s always left me dizzy. Many players like me face similar situations.”

Around the world, age cheating in football is almost as old as the sport. That is why for Nigerians in particular, Tagoe’s story sounds eerily familiar. For instance, ahead of the 2009 Under-17 World Cup at which the Golden Eaglets emerged runners-up, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) almost got on a collision course with the world soccer-governing body, FIFA, over the use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to flush out age cheats. The test had already weeded out 15 age cheats from the Nigerian team, but the then NFF president, Sani Lulu, put up a stiff resistance, declaring that  the federation would not use the FIFA-sanctioned method in detecting over-aged players. He said: “I will not use the MRI to disqualify my players. When we came on board to serve Nigerian people, we promised to eradicate age cheats in cadet championships. FIFA has not given us information on the MRI but I can only use it as a guide.”

It took the intervention of the then Minister of Sports and Chairman of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Sani Ndanusa, to restore sanity. Pooh-poohing the NFF leadership’s decision to invite the parents of the players in camp to validate their ages, Ndanusa said: “We will not deviate from FIFA’s requirement in terms of ascertaining players’ age. The whole world has gone digital and we are following suit. We are no longer in the era of analog, so we are going to adhere to FIFA’s standard in ascertaining the ages of the players we are going to parade. FIFA has indicated the use of MRI, and we are going to just adhere to that, simple.”

Actually, the MRI, although not without drawbacks, has been fairly effective in weeding out overage players over the years. In 2007, the Asian Football Confederation  discovered that 10 players were above the age of 16 during an Under-15 tournament. Ahead of the 2009 FIFA Under-17 tournament, the Gambia Football Association found that a few players that had just failed the MRI scan had actually participated at the 2009 African Under-17 championship. According to FIFA, over the years, “over-age players had been wrongly entered into various youth competitions, often benefiting from an unfair advantage due to their greater physical maturity compared to players of the proper age.” That was why the body introduced the mandatory use of MRI during the 2009 Under-17 World Cup in order to determine the actual ages of the players presented by the various national teams.

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Back to Joe Tagoe’s confession. It is quite easy to join the football veteran in laughing at himself, but the issue he engages is an extremely serious one. Until recently, age cheating was a big problem in African football, particularly in cadet competitions, and the number of players who embarrassed themselves in Europe after getting signed by various clubs was considerable. Indeed, the malaise still goes on in the footballing world as many players, their agents and their parents seek to make cool cash through fraud. As Tagoe’s story demonstrates very clearly, age cheats in sports, or indeed any other field of human endeavour, are unfair even to themselves. They put their bodies through undue strain in order to gain advantage over others, and end up making cruel mockery of themselves. Tagoe’s self-deprecating story has taken some courage to tell, and its lessons are clear: age cheating is anathema in sports.

Of course, the problem starts from the home front where undisciplined parents teach their children to lie, cheat and rob others at a very young age. And the situation is not helped by the actions of members of the political leadership, many of whom have biographies riddled with questionable claims. There have been instances where political leaders supposedly graduated from schools that did not even exist as of the time they claimed to have graduated from them. Such deception has a way of seeping through the pore of society and contaminating many people, including those down the pecking order. Any society that wants a massive turnaround must enthrone a transparent, honest and patriotic political leadership.

Joe Tagoe’s story is instructive. It is hoped that up and coming athletes will learn from the experience of this veteran footballer and not see his story as mere comic relief. That would be quite tragic.