Cameroon: PM turn to Eto'o to save soccer team
Walter Wilson Nana
Cameroon's
prime minister Philemon Yang has met soccer star Samuel Eto'o to help
save the dwindling image of that country's national soccer team. The
government and people of Cameroon are finding it difficult that this
four-time African football champion and five-time World Cup participant
may not be at the 2013 AFCON rendezvous in South Africa.This is the background that prompted the government of Cameroon via the Ministry of Sports and Physical Education to kick-out the former coach of the Lions, Frenchman Denis Lavagne and quickly recruit Jean Paul Akono as replacement. To further bring serenity into a Lions’ den that is said to be in cracks, especially with the very controversial eight-month suspension of the captain, Samuel Fils Eto’o, Prime Minister Philemon Yang, Tuesday, September 25, received in audience, Samuel Eto’o Fils, Rigobert Song Bahanag, Indomitable Lions Team Manager, Jean Paul Akono, newly appointed coach of the team and the Minister of Sports & Physical Education, Adoum Garoua. The conspicuous absence of officials from the country’s football governing body, FECAFOOT was noticed.
Information trickling from that closed door meeting goes that the PM entreated the foursome to work for Cameroon’s qualification for AFCON 2013 in South Africa by winning the do or die game against little rated Cape Verde 3 – 0 come October 14 in Yaoundé. “The interest of the nation must be beyond all others in the preparation of the Cameroon – Cape Verde match.
That’s the message we had from the PM,” Akono told journalists.
In the first leg game of these last qualifiers for South Africa 2013, played in Praia, September 8, Cape Verde humbled Cameroon 2-0. Since then, the nation has been in trouble with herself. The soul of the government has been devastated and the citizens taken aback with the level at which Cameroon football has gone so low.
Some observers of Cameroon football have traced and attached the recent mishaps, faced by the team, on the manner in which the captain ban was taken from Song at the verge of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and given to Eto’o by the then coach, Paul Marie Le Guen. Pundits say since then, it has not been a smooth relationship between Song and Eto’o, who are still in the team in one capacity or the other.
Faced with these incessant problems, the government via the PM has stepped in to say let the opposing forces in the Lions’ den bury their parochial hatchet and work for the general good of the team, the people of Cameroon, the image of Cameroon football, which is currently tainted in the international scene and do their all to qualify for South Africa 2013.
Will this happen come Sunday, October 14, in Yaoundé after 90 minutes of play between the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon and the Blue Sharks of Cape Verde? Let’s wait and see!!
While Cameroonians appreciate the manner and attention in which the government is giving to the Lions, they would have loved to see same prevail for the Indomitable Lionesses. The latter are warming up for the 2012 African Women Championship slated for October – November in Equatorial Guinea in Yaoundé. Unlike the Lionesses, their Nigerian and Ivorian counterparts, who are in same pool with the Lionesses, are fine-tuning their strategies in Japan
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