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Newcastle still target Chancel Mbemba – Reports

9 years ago
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Over in Belgium, new reports claim Newcastle United are maintaining their interest in a summer move for Chancel Mbemba.

The player said to have a buyout clause of between £5m and £6m.

The Congolese international plays for Anderlecht and last month the Belgian media reported that Graham Carr, Newcastle’s Chief Scout, had been over to Belgium to run the rule over the player personally, as well as going to Equatorial Guinea to watch him at the African Cup on Nations.

The centre-back played in all six DR Congo matches in January/February, including the third place play-off where he scored one of the penalties in the shoot-out after extra-time, which DR Congo won 4-2.

Last month Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws stated that they had spoken to Mbemba’s agents, who told them that the reports of Newcastle interest in signing him are true.

A host of other clubs including Atletico Madrid and Porto are also credited with interest.

There is another strand to the story though, for this defender who is under contract until June 2017.

While Anderlecht state that he is a youthful twenty year old, Chancel Mbemba has been the subject of an investigation by FIFA.

In a probe into certain players’ ages, FIFA looked into the case of the defender from Congo.

Back in 2013 CNN revealed:

‘Mbemba was registered by his two first Congolese clubs as being born in 1988, according to documents obtained by CNN. Yet for a Cup of Nations qualifier in June 2011, his year of birth was listed as November 30, 1991.

Meanwhile, the birth date recorded by his Belgian club Anderlecht is August 8, 1994.

Just to complicate matters, Mbemba himself, thinks he was born in 1990.’

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