Zimbabwe football legend Moses Chunga says stiff sanctions should be imposed on football stakeholders involved in age-cheating.
Bambo, as the nomadic coach is affectionately called, believes age-cheating has been allowed to go on for a long time in domestic football when the practice should have been eradicated a long time ago.
Chunga is famous for his “Kidsnet” project at Dynamos in the mid-2000s when his squad included a number of talented youngsters who illuminated the domestic football scene.
The former Soccer Star of the Year runs the Moses Bambo Chunga Academy which he hopes to use as a model for grassroots football development.
Speaking in an interview with The Herald on Thursday, the 54-year-old former Dynamos midfielder said age-cheating is holding back the development of junior football in the country. He said:
Sometimes I feel like laughing when we talk about age-cheating in this era.
But it’s a pity because this thing has been going on since time immemorial.
It’s in human nature to cheat, the human species is good at that but since we are the ones doing it we are also capable of fixing it.
Age-cheating has to stop if we want the best for our children. We make them accomplices in our acts of dishonesty.
But I have an idea which I think can help. We can do it the easy way, let’s say by normalising what looks abnormal.
In the future tournaments to be hosted by the Moses Bambo Chunga Academy, each team will be allowed two over-aged players in every age group.
Even at the Olympics where the national Under-23 teams play, it is allowed.
If you continue to have an appetite to cheat under such an arrangement, then you need your head to be examined.
Tougher sanctions should be given against people who use unsuspecting kids to promote that vice.
Last week, Dynamos was kicked out of the inaugural Marvelous Nakamba tournament in Bulawayo after fielding a 22-year-old man at the Under-17 tournament.