The Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) has revealed that they were shocked to learn that Five (5) players of the Under 17 national team failed the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) age screening conducted in Senegal ahead of the WAFU U17 tournament.

This was disclosed by the SLFA in their press release dated 20th October 2024, noting that the news comes as a shock to the SLEA, given that the team underwent a pre-tournament MRI screening at EcoMed Advanced Medical Diagnostics in Freetown.

SLFA furthered that the results of the screening by EcoMed showed that all members of the squad had passed the test and that the same pre-test procedure was used during the tournaments in Senegal (2020) and Mauritania (2022), where the team achieved a 100% pass rate.

Making the announcement, CAF stated that the U17 football teams from Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Guinea Bissau have been disqualified from the 2024 U17 African Cup of Nations competition in Senegal after failing the mandatory MRI test scans.

CAF maintained that the scans which determine the age of the players revealed discrepancies that led to their removal from the tournament.

CAF added that the MRI tests are used to enforce age, restrictions in youth competitions and the test is crucial in ensuring fairness but that unfortunately, the teams from the three nations did not meet the age criteria, hence their disqualification from the tournament.

This ugly incident has raised serious questions about the effectiveness of the medical diagnostics of EcoMed.