Youssoufa Moukoko, the young Cameroonian striker who broke all records for precociousness, could be about to lose his status as a child prodigy. The reason? The German magazine ‘Bunte’ has published a birth certificate – whose authenticity is not proven – according to which Moukoko could have been born in the year 2000 and not in 2004, that is, he would now be 22 years old and not 18.
As was known until now, Youssoufa Moukoko was born in Yaoundé (Cameroon) on November 20, 2004. In the 2016/17 season, at just 11 years old, he scored 33 goals with the Borussia Dortmund U-15 team. In 2017/18 he made his debut in the under-17 team, and was proclaimed champion of Germany after scoring 40 goals in 28 games, and the following year he surpassed that mark by scoring 50 goals in the same number of games.
At that time, the first rumors about his age already arose, but his father, Joseph Moukoko, took it upon himself to dispel them. “As soon as he was born I registered him at the German consulate in Yaoundé. He has a German birth certificate,” he declared.
In the 2017/18 season, the very young striker posted spectacular numbers: he made seven doubles, four triplets and one poker. Those figures helped him make the leap to the German U-16 team. Moukoko continued to smash records, and in 2019 he became the youngest player to score a goal in the UEFA Youth League at just 14, surpassing Ajax’s Youri Regeer and Olympiacos’ Christos Liatsos who did so at 16.
After dazzling in Dortmund’s youth ranks, he made the leap to the first team, with whom he made his debut on November 21, 2020, thus becoming the youngest footballer of all time to make his Bundesliga debut. He did it at 16 years and 1 day, beating the Turkish Nuri Sahin who had made his debut at 16 years and 335 days.
However, all the early records that the Cameroonian has broken in his short career could lose all their value if it is finally shown that the footballer was born in the year 2000 and not in 2004. According to reports in the German press, Moukoko would have tried to prevent that his birth certificate was published, but in the end he did not succeed.
In addition to the commotion generated around the player’s true age, according to ‘Bunte’, his parents could also be others. In the document, Ousman Mohamadou and Youssoufa Harira are listed as his parents. However, Joseph Moukoko, who lives with the footballer in Germany, testified in court that he is the player’s biological father.
But that of Youssoufa Moukoko is not an isolated case. According to Europa Press, at the beginning of 2023, a control by the Cameroonian Football Federation (FECAFOOT) discovered several modified passports in the U-17 team. Of a total of 30 soccer players presented, 21 did not pass the tests that determine if a child has finished their growth phase, until they are 17 years old.
It happened before the qualification for the African Cup of Nations (CAN) in Algeria. The teams of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Chad were disqualified for falsifying the age of some of their players, although Cameroon eventually managed to rebuild the team. “We must put an end to the false registrations that have tarnished our football,” Samuel Eto’o, president of FECAFOOT, declared at the time.
Moukoko’s case once again splashes African football, which has spent years living with the ghost of falsifying the ages of footballers.
