Alamara Viriata Djabi of Guinea-Bissau faces accusations of falsifying his age. He claimed to be six years younger when he actually came to Portugal as a nineteen.
Alamara Viriata Djabi, recently praised as a great young talent of football from Guinea-Bissau, is facing serious accusations. According to the Portuguese daily Público, he pretended to be six years less than he was.
When he arrived in Portugal in 2019 with documents showing the age of thirteen, he had nineteen at that time.
In the football world, such accusations do not appear for the first time, but the case of Djabi is all the more dramatic because it concerns youth academies and agents moving in the gray zone. According to published DJABI documents, he changed his date of birth from September 28, 2000 to the same date of year 2006. He allegedly used this change in registration in younger categories.
Representatives of the Danish FC Midtjylland club, where Djabi currently operates, permanently refuses to know about fraud. “We rely on official licensing documents and have no reason to contradict their validity,” the club spokesman said. Djabi’s previous engagement at the Academy of Benfica and Hosting in Mafra in the second league of Portuguese are now getting into another light.
The accusations of age fraud are not unique in Africa players. According to some sources, there are a number of cases where younger athletes use counterfeit documents in Guinea-Bissau. But Djabi’s case shows how difficult such practices are interconnected: agents, clubs, state registers and international federations.
Djabi has not publicly commented on the accusations. In one of his few statements, he wrote that “he always performed on the basis of documents presented and considered them legitimate”.
