Mbemba set to leave FC Porto because of age issues. The club suspects that the player is actually 33 and not 27 : r/soccer

As a Porto fan who has been repeatedly harassed in this sub by my fellow fans because I dared to mention these facts and show pictures of his 1988 passport, I'm not sure what to feel

On the one hand, suck it you bunch of horrible assholes (hi there /u/bertobrb I know you're reading this. I would mention the others but they've all been banned by now), but on the other hand this is bad news for the club I love.

Mbemba himself said back at Anderlecht that he thinks he was "probably" born in 1990. His official birthdate is 1994. But the Congo football authorities had him listed as born 1988 when he was a youngster. If you believe the player, he was 16 in 2010 when this photo was taken

Unfortunately there is no test for age in humans other than an x-ray of the hand and wrist bones to assess degree of fusion. And that is only accurate until everything is fused which happens around 17. So for anyone older than 17 the test is useless. Naturally Mbemba has repeatedly claimed that this test "proved" his age was real. He was in his early or mid 20s by the time he had it done so it was actually pointless.