Ghana’s under-17 team, the Black Starlets, have been given the green light to participate in the WAFU Zone B U17 Championships in Niger after all 20 players passed the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) tests.
The tests, which were supervised by officials of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), were to check the eligibility of players based on ages.
The tests use the fusion of bones in the wrist as way of checking the ages of players featuring in U17 championships. Most often, the fusion of bones in the wrist will, in most cases, mean that a player is 18 and cannot play in an U-17 tournament.
But while success was on Ghana’s side, other teams did not experience the same positive fortunes.
Benin had their team disqualified after more than half of their players failed the test.
Niger, Burkina Faso and Togo had one player each sent home while Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire had one player each sent home.
According to the spokesperson of the Liaison Team tasked with handling football in Ghana, Dan Kweku Yeboah, the Ministry of Youth and Sports paid the bills for initial MRI scans for the Black Starlets team to be done in Ghana before they left for Niger.
And that is believed to be the reason behind Ghana’s clean bill of health in relation to the CAF tests.
Ghana will play against Niger on September 5 in their first match of the WAFU Zone B U-17 Tournament.
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By: Nathan Quao/citifmonline.com/Ghana