Why Chelsea's Bertrand Traore Will Receive Age Cheating Accusations

When Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho threw Bertrand Traore into the Blues' preseason tour of Asia, the Special One unintentionally made the 17-year-old Burkina Faso international the most coveted teenage free agent from now till September 6.

Here's the No. 1 question on the minds of those who cannot stand the Blues potentially having another world-class prospect: is Traore an age-cheat?

No—and here's why. 

After decades of turning a blind eye to institutional age fraud which was sullying the entity of the youth World Cup, FIFA mandated magnetic resonance imaging testing on teams at the 2009 U-17 World Cup. 

"MRI of the wrist is a simple, reliable, valid and non-invasive method of age determination in young male football players," said FIFA Chief Medical Officer Professor Jiri Dvorak to FIFA.com.

Do you know who the youngest player at that tournament was? Traore, then a 14-year-old—and as we found out, a legitimate 14 years of age.

Conversely, BBC Sport's Oluwashina Okeleji reported then-Nigerian U-17 manager John Obuh dropping 15 players from his pre-tournament squad for failing the MRI test. 

Several years earlier, after Nigerian international Yakubu netted a hat trick for Everton, his manager at the time, David Moyes, was embroiled in a PR nightmare with the Nigerian FA, after he jokingly said, via the Liverpool Echo: "[Yakubu] is only 25, albeit a Nigerian 25."

Moyes' remark is concurrent with what South African Football Association president Kirsten Nematandani said, via Yahoo! News: "When you ask an African player how old he is, he will say: 'Do you want my football age or my real age?'"

This is why the 'kid' in wonderkids from African nations are often questioned, so much so that ESPN FC's Leander Schaerlaeckens prefaced his article on Romelu Lukaku by making it clear he's Belgian:

"

It's rather a good thing Romelu Lukaku was born in Belgium. Otherwise, soccer's very own birther movement would have inevitably come after him. His birth certificate says Antwerp, a biggish city in Flanders, known for its excellent surgeons and doctors, putting him above suspicion about his real age.

"

The ultimate irony of African countries becoming the face of age-cheating is that one of the most celebrated players in World Cup history is Cameroonian Roger Milla, who embraced his age, scored four times as a 38-year-old and once as a 42-year-old during the 1990 and 1994 FIFA World Cup. 

Africans being the punch-line to age-cheating is a stereotype as there have been notable examples of non-African nations cheating age as well.

• In 1988, FIFA handed Mexico a two-year ban for fielding four over-aged players during the 1989 FIFA World Youth Championship qualifiers. 

• As reported by BBC Sport South American correspondent Tim Vickery: "Brazil won the 2003 World Youth Cup—for players of 20 and under—with a team that included a 25-year-old [Carlos Alberto de Oliveira Júnior]."

• Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Nepal, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Thailand and Yemen were caught age-cheating, according to an AFC media release. 

• Earlier this year, 25-year-old Ecuadorian Juan Espinoza posed as 17-year-old Max Barrios for Peru during the 2013 South American Youth Championship, per Manuel Vigo at Peru This Week.

Former Ghanaian international Yaw Preko explained why age-cheating was a necessity for his career, via Modern Ghana: "We were able to reduce it to the right age that is why I was able to play 17 years in Europe."

Traore doesn't need to cut a few years off his age because he's the real deal: always looking to get involved in play, calm in possession and has a lethal left foot.

He may end up performing at his best in a free-roaming capacity as a deep-lying forward similar to the role Lorient manager Christian Gourcuff gave Alain Traore, Bertrand's older brother. 

Back to Bertrand.

Only the ignorant will accuse him of being an age-cheat despite him passing the MRI test and him being this emaciated, waif-like, skinny kid at a tournament which featured the likes of Mario Götze, Neymar, Stephan El Shaarawy, Koke, Isco, Heung Min Son, Adam Maher, et al.

The one constructive criticism then-Burkina Faso U-17 manager Rainer Willfeld made about Traore related to the then-14-year-old's physique, which is the main advantage of age-cheats.

"What Traore is lacking is physical ability to compete with bigger players in a one-on-one situation," Willfeld said to FIFA.com. "Traore can reach any level if he comes into good coaching, people who will look after him correctly and not make him a big player before he is a big player."

The latter part of Willfeld's quote could be interpreted as a reference to former Borussia Dortmund player Bachirou Salou, who played under Willfeld for Togo during the 1987 Youth Championship.

Just to clarify, Traore is technically a free agent as no European club can sign him until he turns 18 (September 6), via BBC Sport:

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Football sides are not allowed to sign any foreign players under the age of 18 unless both team and player are from an EU country (or are less than 100 km apart across an international border) or the player's parents move to that country for non-football reasons.

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If you're wondering why Traore has been in Chelsea's football system for a few years now, it's due to him being on a student visa. 

Here's another example. 

When Australian striker Corey Gameiro was 16, now 20 and a Sydney FC player, a student visa enabled him to play for the Fulham academy, via the Illawarra Mercury:

"

One of Malcolm Elias' [Fulham Head of Talent ID and Recruitment] first calls upon moving was to Gameiro's representatives to ask the youngster to come to England on a student visa.

Gameiro: "I thought I would have had to wait until I was 18 to get a chance, but Fulham have done that and now I get to see what it takes."

"

Yes, Traore is free to ditch the Blues but because the club has built up a rapport with him, despite him not being an official player, it's safe to assume he'll live up to what he told Matthew Kenyon at BBC Sport in January 2011: "I want to play in the first team for Chelsea, I want to play the UEFA Champions League with the big names."

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Statistics courtesy of WhoScored.com, Fox Soccer and Squawka.com