It only works if the child wasn’t born in the UK and arrived at a certain age. If they arrived too young it wouldn’t make sense to do it and if they arrived too late it could be too noticeable to get away with.
So some of the cases where people claim it is happening don’t always fit because the child arrived too early for it to make sense.
Sure. In the case of Ibragimov the claim above would make him 18 rather than 16. He played in the National League Cup against Rochdale this week, scored the winner and was man of the match. The average age of the Rochdale side was 24, albeit they're in the 5th tier now. He played better than other older England internationals Dan Gore (20), Jack Fletcher (17) and Ethan Wheatley (18). He looked pretty small on the pitch as well, although pretty quick and with a big engine.
Ibragimov doesn't strike me as someone who looks older than he is. I guess he could pass for 18, but he'd look a young 18. With that pic of him with that Russian 06 team, is it not possible he was playing up with them too, and has just generally played with higher age groups his whole life? Who knows.
I think he probably does look 18 but then young footballers generally look older than they are and sometimes by a lot. It's well established that footballers are generally among the oldest of their classmates at school. I think there's a similar advantage to those that are biologically older, or have gone through puberty sooner. I agree that the Ibragimov accusations seem somewhat tenuous. Unlike some other cases you hear about. The eldest Ibragimov brother is a pro MMA fighter, not exactly a sport that age doping can get you to the top in.
In that pic he would have been 7 then playing with 9 year olds as he signed for Sheffield United at 10. This despite you guys saying he's small. The club he represented are one of the most bent clubs ever to exist in European football. If you looked through England's youth squads there are loads of foreign born players. Just seems uncanny.
He’s short but he looks strong and quick. Max Dowman is 14 and made his u21 debut the other day. Highly talented players often play in higher age groups. A seven year old playing two years up isn’t that surprising, its not exactly a world class academy either.
I can't actually find those photos on the Instagram account they're supposed to have been posted on. Any idea where you got them from? The only post I can see about Ibragimov is this one from a couple of months back, and they refer to him as a 16 year old there.
Lesecond Yeutembip (Newcastle, ex Charlton) Jayden Garthwaite (Aston Villa) Gillingham's Luca Procopi and Carlisle's Josh Wade seem to have been names missed from Camp 2.
As Moukoko from Dortmund's own Father comes out and says he's 4 years older than his documents suggest pretty unbelievable that the FA can get involved in the same nonsense. Why any team/foreign nation would touch a supposed 'child' born in Cameroon is beyond me.
Moukoko would be no surprise. Among other things, he's looked far older than his peers at every stage, he was listed as 5'10" tall by Dortmund when he was 15 and he's still 5'10" tall now, he dated an 18 year old woman when he was supposedly 12, his father claimed to have had a birth certificate issued by the German embassy only for the embassy to contradict that, and a German publication has previously presented a birth certificate that, if real, showed that he was born in 2000 - Moukoko went through the German courts to prevent them from releasing it and the courts refused to block it. We can't know for sure, but you'd have to be pretty credulous not to have questioned his age for a long while now. Surely Ockham's Razor has to be applied at some point. The claims about Ibragimov seems a lot more tenuous to me. As far as you've been able to explain, it's at least partly based on photos of him as either a 12-year-old or a 10-year-old (depending on the day) at a 2016 tournament. There certainly was an Anzhi player who looked a lot like him at that tournament (see this photo and the next few in that set), but I've found at least one club that sent its 2008-born group to exactly that tournament, so clearly kids of that age weren't excluded. There's also a goalscorer listed for that Anzhi team by the name of Gazimagomed Gerekykhanov. If that was his younger brother's "real name", as you've been claiming, then I wouldn't expect them to be on the same team. That makes me think that perhaps there was just another family with similar first names at the club, and people have got a bit confused. I haven't been able to corroborate the rest of the screenshots you've shown us, and you don't seem to know where they come from either. I'm not going to say that they definitely aren't significant, but it's a bit pointless asking us to form opinions if you can't provide the slightest bit of proof that they show what you say they do. Without that, they're just some words typed by someone somewhere about something.
It must be somewhat odd for the sons of famous players in academies particularly ones at clubs their dad was an important player at.
So just to confirm people believe the Cameroon born Nkoto twins from United were 11 when they signed. They won the Albert Phelan as u12s (3 years up) and haven't grown in years. Photos are available from those games. It's a complete farce. They still qualify to play in it now. Their cousin Will in same squad at City. Junior Nsangous brother (again Cameroon born) selected. The FA must be insane to believe this to be true.