THE team manager for the national Under 17 team has spoken out following last week’s Informanté exposé regarding age-cheating.

Jacks Amaning has made several stunning revelations concerning the age-cheating sagas surrounding junior players.
20 Namibian players below the age of 16 will camp for two weeks at a high quality training camp in Duisburg, Germany from 2 March 2009, under the tutelage of U17 Coach William Kapukare. The camp was organised by the NFA in conjunction with German’s Football Association DFB.
Amaning however, has labeled this particular age-group as the primary source of age-cheating in soccer, largely because the division also acts as the conveyor belt into senior national teams.
“We are looking for players born in 1993 to come for trials this coming month so that we select the best players and take them to Germany. We have discovered that every parent wants their children to go to Europe, so they get them their younger relatives’ identities and send them to us. How do you turn down a player who comes with a normal birth certificate?” Amaning quizzed.
The NFA will no longer accept any children who come for trials without a full birth certificate and without the company of a guardian or parent.
“We are not responsible for cheating. The Under 17 team that did good last year is registered in the CAF (continental mother body) database because we played in a Caf tournament. If they were players who cheated, unfortunately they can no longer change their names or ages because Caf already knows them. And if we change such things that late we risk being banned. We will avoid it in future,” he said.
According to Amaning, chances are that parents often influence their children to cheat the system in order to make it into junior national teams. “When news leaked out that an U16 team would go to Germany, I received hundreds of calls from parents.”
Amaning expressed delight that seven players from last year’s Under 17 team are now actively engaged in top premiership clubs.
“There is a lot of talent in juniors and we want to develop them, but parents must not rob these youngsters or allow their children to be duped into changing their age. NFA will never know a player until he plays football. In some instances, we have registered players with our juniors only to be told later that he once played somewhere else.”
Amaning urged fans to report any over aged players to the NFA before the youngsters start playing competitively. He said the NFA has been closely following the municipality’s U15 games as a source of genuine aged-players, and would recruit most of its players for the Germany trip from this group.