By Les Tan/Red Sports

Youth Olympic football

The Bolivians celebrate their gold in Singapore last month but now a dark cloud hangs over their achievement. (Photo © SPH-SYOGOC/Eddie Chen)

The Bolivians won the gold at the recent Youth Olympic Games football competition when they beat Haiti 5-0 in the final.

Last Saturday, at 1.41am, a reader, apparently from Uruguay, popped by and wrote:

“Bolivia used older players! It has been made public by even Bolivian authorities like the president of Santa Cruz coaches of Bolivia!

They should be taken off the medals and receive a very hard and example penalties for this! This should be hardly discouraged and punished! What’s going to happen!?”

The story broke last week in Bolivia, with allegations that up to five players in Singapore were aged 16 to 19 years of age.

Singapore’s local broadsheet (p3, The Straits Times) ran the story today.

The man who made this allegation, Arturo Garcia, chairman of the Coaches Association of Santa Cruz, said he received death threats for going public.

“They called me and told me they were going to kill me. Other people who also knew left me alone,” said Garcia, according to la-razon.com.

Bolivian soccer idol, Marco Antonio Etcheverry, who travelled with the squad to Singapore, has defended the Youth Olympic squad.

“These people only want to do harm, because they are mediocre and losers,” Etcheverry was quoted as saying on a Bolivian sports website.

A formal investigation is underway in Bolivia.

This is not the first blow that the Youth Olympic Games football competition has received. The tournament was criticised for the low standard of football countries involved.

FIFA were responsible for the format of the tournament and they invited countries which currently have no realistic hope of qualifying for any of their age-group championships. This left some football fans feeling a little put out.

This was in stark contrast to the Youth Olympic basketball competition where 20 teams came to play, including strong basketball countries like Serbia, China, USA, Spain and Greece. This led the IOC to praise the governing basketball body FIBA for innovating with its 3-on-3 format which allowed so many countries to take part.

Jacque Rogge, when questioned about the poor quality football teams, said: “In football, we did not have very strong teams. This was the deliberate policy of FIFA.”