False Flags
Equatorial Guinea and Their Team of Undercover Brazilians
In the late 2000s, Equatorial Guinea, a nation with a population below one million, emerged as a surprise package in African women’s football.
In 2008, they lifted the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) as hosts. In 2010, they reached the final in South Africa. In 2012, the ‘Nzalang Femenino’ again hosted and again triumphed.
At a glance, it appeared to be a remarkable ascension. But beneath the surface, there were signs that something wasn’t right. Across the next decade, a series of investigations from FIFA and the Confederation of African Football (CAF) exposed that much of Equatorial Guinea’s success had been built on forgery and blatant rule-breaking.
With Nigeria and Ghana dominating the African game for decades, it seemed implausible for another national side to challenge the duopoly. But Equatorial Guinea, with a squad that looked stronger and stronger with each tournament, began attracting attention.
The 2008 WAFCON victory was historic - not only because they beat the mighty Super Falcons in the semi finals, but because it was the first time a team other than Nigeria or Ghana had won the competition. When they repeated this feat four years later, it only reinforced their status as one of the big dogs on the continent.
As media attention surrounding the team’s rapid rise intensified, so did questions about where some of its most talented players had appeared from. As it turned out, a suspicious number were of Brazilian origin, and questions were soon asked about irregularities in their documentation.
The first sanction came in 2011, when FIFA disqualified Equatorial Guinea from the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The offence was the use of ineligible forward Jade Boho Sayo, who had represented Spain at youth level but never formally completed her nationality switch.
This seemed more like a standalone admin oversight rather than a calculated effort to circumvent the rules. But in hindsight, it was only the beginning.
The situation escalated in the following years. In April 2016, FIFA banned Equatorial Guinea from the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo after discovering that Brazilian-born midfielder Camila Nobre had used two different passports and birth certificates with conflicting details to play for the side. She was hit with a 10 match ban and fined 2,000 Swiss francs.
In October 2017, the governing body also expelled Equatorial Guinea from the 2019 Women’s World Cup after dropping the bombshell that no fewer than 10 ineligible players had featured for the national team during qualifiers for the 2016 Olympics in Rio. These players, all with Brazilian heritage, were found to have used falsified documents to claim Equatoguinean nationality.
The Equatoguinean Football Association was fined 100,000 Swiss francs. On top of sanctions for the federation, players Muriel Linda Mendoua Abessolo and Francisca Angue Ondo Asangono received individual 10 match suspensions for submitting forged documentation.
FIFA’s findings painted an ugly picture of a national programme that had gone far beyond cutting corners. It was encouraging and coordinating fraud to gain an advantage on the pitch.
The Confederation of African Football soon followed suit with its own inquiry. In 2016, CAF banned Equatorial Guinea from three consecutive instalments of WAFCON. The offence this time was the use of Camila Nobre in a qualifying match against Mali.
Les Aiglonnes were apologetically reinstated to the tournament and Equatorial Guinea’s ban was a crushing blow to a team that had once looked like becoming Africa’s next superpower.
As if a full-blown nationality scandal wasn’t enough to deal with, Equatorial Guinea’s women’s team were also dragged into a gender row. The controversy peaked during the 2010 WAFCON, when opponents publicly questioned the gender of several players, including captain Genoveva Anonma and the Simporé ‘sisters’, Salimata and Bilguissa.
The accusations, based largely on physical appearance and physicality on the pitch, prompted an investigation by the CAF.
Anonma later revealed that she had been forced to strip naked in front of confederation officials to prove her gender - an experience she described as humiliating. No sanctions were brought, and she was cleared to continue playing.
The Simporés however, were quietly dropped from the national team and never featured again. Later, a former coach claimed they were in fact biological men, though this has never been confirmed by an official source.
While the truth around the gender controversy remains somewhat unclear, this crazy episode only added another layer of scrutiny to a national association already under close watch by football’s authorities.
It wasn’t only the women’s programme that found itself in a spot of bother. The men’s national team was also under the microscope for shady practices. Back in 2013, FIFA overturned a World Cup qualifying win after determining that not a single player in Equatorial Guinea’s starting 11 was born in the country.
In the years since the fallout, Equatorial Guinea have made attempts to rebuild their reputation, but they remain largely absent from the top tier of African competition. Their name, sadly, is now associated with controversy and scandal rather than with sporting success.