The 34th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations will start on January 13, 2024.
A few days ago, this Africa Cup of Nations ushered in the first Internet hotspot, which was caused by a "young player" in the Cameroon national team squad.
Cameroon's squad is 27 players.
At the outset, the focus was on the stark differences between the country's two stars, with Manchester United goalkeeper Ona, who has been controversial in the Premier League this season, included in the squad, while Bayern striker Choupo-Moting was omitted.
But later, the attention fell on a player named Douala.
According to Cameroon's submission, Douala plays as a midfielder and now plays for Cameroon's Victoria United, and most controversially, Douala was born on May 15, 2006 and is 17 years old.
Please note that the picture above is a picture of the so-called 17-year-old Douala.
When reporting on the controversy in Douala, the Spanish newspaper Marca directly carried out the headline: "African scandal: Cameroon has recruited a 17-year-old boy...... But he doesn't look like that at all."
The headlines of the media are fairly restrained. The comments of netizens were even more spicy, with some commenting highly: "He seems to have been in prison for 17 years." ”
However, it has also happened for a long time that African players are old-looking, and some people have sent a photo of Cameroon player Minara when he was 17 years old (below) when he played for Lazio in Serie A and Qingdao Huanghai in the Chinese Super League, which is not far behind Douala.
The Africa Cup of Nations is a senior national team competition, and there is no reason for players to panic about their age, but it has happened many times in African football. Gabon's Shiva Nzigu broke through the door of South Africa at the 2000 Africa Cup of Nations, setting the record for the youngest goal in the Africa Cup of Nations at the age of 16, but in 2018 it was discovered that Nzigu had actually changed his age, and his actual age when he scored was 21 years old, and his record was fake. In recent years, there have been at least 10 such age change scandals in African football, and South African player Goodman Musa Magagula has been caught using his cousin Goodman Teboho Sauhatsi to play professional football in order to change his age by three years. The purpose of changing the age of African players may not be to improve the results of the youth national team, but to allow themselves to enter the eyes of European clubs at a younger age.
Cameroonian foreign player Minara, who used to play for the Qingdao Yellow Sea team, is very suspicious of changing his age. Minara played for Lazio in Serie A at the age of 17, joined the Chinese Super League at the age of 23 and is now playing in the Maltese league at the age of 27. This kind of debut is the peak, and then the worse and worse the mix, is completely inconsistent with the career trajectory of a normal professional footballer.