Background and career
Youssoufa Moukoko (born 20 November 2004) is a professional footballer who plays as a striker for Süper Lig club Çorum, on loan from Danish Superliga club Copenhagen. Born in Cameroon and holding German and Cameroonian nationality, he has represented the Germany national team.
Moukoko became one of the most closely watched teenagers in European football while playing several years above his registered age group in the Borussia Dortmund academy, where he scored 83 goals in 50 Under 17 Bundesliga matches and a divisional record 34 in 20 in the Under 19 Bundesliga. The DFL lowered its minimum age for senior registration in 2020 following a Dortmund proposal, and on 21 November that year, a day after his sixteenth birthday, he became the youngest player in Bundesliga history. Within a month he had also become the youngest player in the UEFA Champions League and the youngest scorer in the Bundesliga.
The senior career that followed did not sustain that trajectory. Behind Erling Haaland and later Niclas Füllkrug at Dortmund, he started rarely, and a loan to Nice in 2024–25 ended with him out of the matchday squad altogether. He rebuilt at Copenhagen, whom he joined in 2025 and for whom he was leading scorer in his first season with 18 goals, though largely from the bench. He won the DFB-Pokal with Dortmund in 2021 and was named in Germany's squad for the 2022 FIFA World Cup at seventeen.
His recorded date of birth has been disputed since 2017. Investigative reporting by Der Spiegel and a 2024 ProSieben documentary, in which the man registered as his father swore that Moukoko was born four years earlier than stated, prompted a criminal inquiry in Hamburg. If that account is correct, the age records would not stand.
