Joseph Minala is a midfielder coming from Cameroon, who plays for the Youth team of Lazio. Just a 17 year old midfielder, coming from Cameroon. He’s good, but not good enough to be a popular name amongst sports fans at this young age. Nonetheless, he’s famous. Not for something he did, or said, nor for something that happened to him. He’s famous because of the way he looks.


And he looks old. Older than what his passport says. When Minala first came to Rome in 2011, playing for Vigor Perconti after a flashy one day enrollment for the Città di FIumicino, he showed pretty soon he was a good player, drawing the attention of major clubs like Udinese, Napoli and Inter. But these teams didn’t sign him, as they weren’t sure about his real age. Lazio, instead, believed in him, so they signed him for their Primavera team.


The buzz around him started in January, when Lazio published a photo of him on the social media in training clothes. People started to raise the first doubts. You know, because he didn’t look like a right fit in a youth team. At all. Then, in February, the Senegalese site senego.com released an interview with the player in which Minala declared “I am not 17 years old. I had to sign a contract quickly to send as much money to my family that remained in Cameroon" and, "I will celebrate my 42nd birthday next August". An Italian newspaper reported the news, and the next thing you know is that Joseph Minala just became viral, the news was all over the country, his age a hot topic, his face a meme, providing additional, unnecessary fuel for the so-called “sfottò” (mockery) between Lazio and their rivals.


Lazio initially didn’t comment the news, but issued an official statement to defend the club conduct and the player, threatening legal action against anybody who would say or write that the player and the team are lying about the young Cameroonian's age. Even Lazio’s president Claudio Lotito spoke up, as he usually does: “They try to discredit our club, throwing mud at us. How can a 40 years old man physically hold up the pace of a Primavera game?” Turns out that the interview was a fake, and that Minala is actually 17 years old and all his documents are authentic. But one of the most long-lived Italian prime ministers once said “to think the worst of someone is a sin, but usually you are right”.


And that sentence kind of sums up what Italians think about “conspiracy theories” in general. In these cases, nobody knows what happens in the civil registries in Africa, or, better, everybody thinks they know. And there is a vast array of precedents to endorse these types of thoughts.


Since the times of Roger Milla, legendary Cameroonian striker who reached his apex at 35, and who had lied about his age at the beginning of his career (paradoxically increasing it) to skip several youth team levels, the African civil registries have always been a little creative. Or absent, like the one in Monrovia (Liberia) the day George Weah saw the light for the first time.


So who can say if the great Liberian player is a ‘63 or a ’66? Another excellent example is Taribo West, central back who played for Inter and Milan at the end of the ‘90s, who is still suspected to be 12(!) years older than he claims to be. In many cases, there is just no way to know the exact age of those players, just because nobody was there to take note the day they were born. African federations take advantage of that and falsify their registries to build incredible youth national teams and sell their players abroad. Not cool.


The case of Luciano, Brazilian (not African) wing player who made his fortune with Chievo Verona, is one of the most famous. That’s for two reasons: first of all, he confessed to be four years older before being traded to Lazio, so that’s not just a suspect: we are certain of what happened. Second: Luciano lied about his age AND his name, in fact, he was Eriberto when he first arrived in Verona. But in reality he was, and still is, Luciano, now playing for Mantova in LegaPro. He confessed everything, paid his debt, and redeemed himself.


In the case of Joseph Minala, we want to believe in the kid and give credit to Lazio, hoping to see the growth of a player worthy to play in Serie A in the upcoming years. That’s all anyone should care about: to see more good players. And if the player we’re admiring on the green stage is a 50-year-old lad, well, that kind of increases the fun, doesn’t it? Good luck Joseph.