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Zimbabwe has been disqualified from the COSAFA Men’s Under-17 Championship, currently underway in South Africa, for using players of legal age.
The Young Warriors had started the campaign on Thursday, playing in the tournament opener against Angola. They tied the match 1-1 and were scheduled to play South Africa on Saturday in the other Group A match before rounding up the first round against Eswatini.
However, they will not be able to continue after magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tests discovered that a couple of the team’s players had falsely presented their age.
Eswatini, Comoros and Botswana were also found guilty and sent home.
The disqualification means the Young Warriors are also out of the 2021 U-17 Africa Cup of Nations scheduled for Morocco.
The COSAFA tournament is being used as a qualification campaign for the continental event.
Confirming the developments, COSAFA said: “The Youth Competitions Committee of the African Football Confederation (CAF) made the decision to disqualify teams from the zonal qualifying tournament for the 2021 U-17 Africa Cup of Nations on Friday.
“The quartet had at least one player fail their magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans that were performed in the host country prior to the start of the competition.”
Meanwhile, the revised matches will begin Sunday as a four-team tournament and will be played head-to-head, with the top two teams advancing to a final on November 29.
Angola and Zambia fight in an early start before host South Africa play Malawi at 3pm.
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