Long gone are the days when asking a lady her age was considered the height of insulting behaviour but increasingly it seems the football world should be using this course of action when considering the legitimacy of many African players and their alleged ages.

Newcastle are currently looking into reports from Nigeria that transfer target striker Obafemi Martins is possibly SIX YEARS older than his official age of 21. This mix-up came to light after claims Martins played alongside Toon defender Celestine Babayaro — who is 28 in 14 days — in the Nigerian youth set-up.

This latest claim comes a year after the passport dispute involving the Internazionale striker. The date of birth on his passport stated 28 October 1984 while the website of the Nigeria Football Association (NFA) said he was born on 1 May 1978. Those missing six years would mean quite a difference in transferable value for a valuable asset like Martins for a prestigious club such as Inter Milan, possibly the difference between a valuation of £15 million and £5 million which is quite a drop even for Inter Milan.

Players such as Cameroon’s World Cup hero Roger Milla, West Brom’s Nigerian striker Kanu and former Nigerian winger Finidi George have all been dogged throughout their careers with (as yet) unproven rumours as to their actual ages and with Milla, in particular, having played and scored in the World Cup finals in USA ’94 aged 42 years 1 month and 8 days we have to ask the question, just what age was the tournament’s oldest goal-scorer really? 42? 45? 48? Over fifty? The mind boggles.

The biggest question marks of all currently are being hinted at over the real age of American wonderkid Freddy Adu, the sixteen year old star of DC United and the MLS’s highest paid player. While his physique, even as a fourteen or fifteen year old, made many watchers raise an eyebrow over the authenticity of his age, it should be remembered that both Pele and Ronaldo won the World Cup with Brazil while 17 years of age and just because Adu has the build of a man ten years his senior it shouldn’t automatically mean the former Ghanain native is the subject of a most elaborate age fraud. Whether he ever lives up to the ridiculous hype that has surrounded him for the last few years and earned him a $1million sponsorship deal with Nike is another question but if he does continue his promising growth in the game and get his dream move to Europe you can be sure the question of Freddy’s age will once again rear it’s head.

Using illegal methods such as passport tampering in countries where the quality and validity of public records is often questionable is an easy way to take a twenty five year old player and play him in a Youth Championship where if he is spotted by a European club it is easy to tell them that he is only seventeen years old. The player’s old club and family get the cash windfall while the new club in question gets a player a good five years or more older than they thought they were getting. At it’s base level it is nothing more than fraud and when the African footballing authorities are willing to turn a blind eye and put their trust in dubious documents, never worrying how authentic they are, then one major level of policing this infringement has been removed.