Youssoufa Moukoko: Age Isn't Just a Number

Do misperceptions of age affect the way young footballers are covered?

Youssoufa Moukoko’s age has been questioned publicly since he started destroying German youth divisions and their goalscoring records. Compounding speculation, his adoptive father sent a supposed birth certificate to Vienna-based news portal Laola1 last week alleging the 18-year-old striker is really a 22-year-old striker.

Moukoko is the youngest footballer to make his Bundesliga debut, playing his first top-flight match 24 hours after his 16th birthday. He is the best U-18 prospect in Germany, his contract with Borussia Dortmund expires in five months, and the forward has suitors across Europe. Rumours about his “real age” only serve to harm Moukoko’s trajectory.

The motives of his adoptive family aside, these stories are easily believed because they confirm biases already held. I’m incapable of deducing the truth from this desk. My disposition is believing the player and his club unless indisputable evidence is presented. In that sense, Moukoko’s “real age” is irrelevant to me. I consider him an 18-year-old footballer. My attraction is the conjecture—how it is built and why it is believed.

Much is not required to make African footballers targets of age-related gossip; but if we want an honest discussion, acknowledgment is required that shenanigans with birth certificates are not always fabricated. Allegations of fraud in African football are an annual occurrence. In recent history, the Guinea men’s team were banned from the 2019 U-17 World Cup, the Ghana women’s team were banned from the 2022 U-17 World Cup, and 21 of 30 players in the Cameroon men’s team failed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) screening before 2023 U-17 Africa Cup of Nations qualification. Samuel Eto’o, president of Cameroon’s football federation, mandated the tests to eliminate fraud.

Born in Yaoundé, and given his birth country’s reputation, Moukoko’s heritage has found use by certain press to colour the narrative. “Germany international” when he scores, “Cameroon-born” when discussing his age. We know the rhythm. Being a Cameroonian football prodigy creates doubt for the media to exploit, maybe even duplicitous parents.

An interesting trope about African people is the capacity to be indistinguishable in age. “Black don’t crack” is an oft-used saying, meaning one ages gracefully. If you know enough Africans then you understand not everyone looks younger than their age, but comparatively it may have merit. Yet there seems a disconnect between how adults and youth are viewed.

Adults perhaps benefit from this indistinguishability, but youth in multicultural societies aren’t seen as younger than their age. They aren’t seen as their actual age. They are given the weight of being older. Somewhere along the line “black don’t crack” takes over, but before it does there are real dangers in societies where those with power are prone to misidentifying African youth.

Published in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a study called The Essence of Innocence: Consequences of Dehumanizing Black Children outlines the phenomena. Researchers asked university students to rate boys' innocence from infants to age 25. Regardless of race, children were viewed as innocent up to age nine. Once they began dealing with children older than 10, the presumption of innocence was lost at a higher rate for African children when compared with others. The university students added an average of four-and-a-half years to the real ages of African boys when told they had committed the same actions as boys in other groups.

Written as an associate professor of social psychology at UCLA, Phillip Atiba Goff told NPR concerning the study he helped publish:

We first just showed people pictures of boys of various ages and of various races, and asked them to guess how old they were, but as we kept going we said in a criminal justice context, where this matters the most, they would have information about something that the boy was suspected of. So we had them suspected of misdemeanors, and we describe the misdemeanor like vandalism or getting into a scuffle at school, or they were suspected of felonies like car theft or something like that. We have that next to the picture and ask people how old does this person look.

And replicating previous work by Sandra Graham, Brian Lowery, Jennifer Eberhardt, other folks who had found similar kinds of things, people saw the black children as much older than the white children of the same age suspected of the same crime.

When I read the study, I immediately thought of Tamir Rice.

On November 22, 2014, the 12-year-old was playing outside of a Cleveland, Ohio recreation centre with a toy gun—something most boys in the United States are socialised to do. Police were called to the centre based on an emergency call, and within seconds of law enforcement arriving, Rice was gunned down before the patrol car had rolled to a stop.

Extending American police the most grace I can muster, I’d like to assume they aren’t in the profession to shoot 12-year-old children. Were it up to me they wouldn’t be shooting anybody, but that’s for another day. I’d like to assume they thought they were responding to a grown-up with a weapon. Even then, killing someone within seconds would be criminally rash, but were it an adult who better understood the society in which they lived, it could possibly rest easier on my mind than the consequences wrought on a 12-year-old boy.

Rice didn’t get time to explain himself, nor did the police officers (who were placed on paid administrative leave and never charged) give themselves time to assess the situation. They assumed Rice was an adult, and did what they would do to any African man with a weapon or perceived weapon: shoot on sight.

Mentioned at the start, there are issues on the African continent that must be dealt with. Federation presidents like Eto’o seem invested in the game’s integrity, but claims alone are usually enough to spark and sustain controversy. Perhaps in that way the study has relevance in the believability of age fraud claims. African youth (the same applies to girls) are not given the benefit of the doubt. Whether their nationality, the tendency to overestimate their age, or a combination, African children are made into adults. This “adultification” has more serious implications in the criminal justice system, but misconceptions and perceptions of age must affect why certain outlets run convincing campaigns.

If the wider public adds an average of four-and-a-half years to an African child’s age when criminality is mentioned, it more easily holds if one is told an 18-year-old striker is indeed a 22-year-old striker. Moukoko’s adoptive family may well have his genuine birth certificate, but even if they don’t, there’s a chance your mind can’t tell the difference between 18 and 22. It may not be able to tell the difference between 14 and 18.

When reading comments underneath pictures of Moukoko, I invariably see statements saying he’s older than reported, and is therefore fraudulent. I wonder how much is confirmation bias related to African paperwork and how much is unconscious bias fueled by misunderstanding the ages of African children. I’m confident it’s both, but the ratio of one to another is a bespoke calculation.

The harsher reality is if African football eliminated age fraud, young footballers would remain subjected to society viewing and treating them as adults. If a given society handles its adults with respect, decency, and empathy, there would be no issue. Regrettably, that isn’t foundational. One benefit of childhood is protection and universal agreement about that protection. Robbing a child of their innocence, wittingly or unwittingly, and placing the burden of adulthood on them is an unsparing state of affairs.

In the short term, I wish Moukoko the best of luck. Football careers are finite, and the ability to make money comes within a relatively small window. Attempts are made to widen that window, but knee joints and Achilles tendons aren’t concerned with birth certificates, they can fail any time. 🎯