Cameroon is among 16 African nations aiming to qualify for the Olympics in Athens next year. Two successive Olympic gold medals for Africa means there will be 5 representatives from the continent amongst the 16 qualifiers at Athens next year.
The qualifying process to decide who those five will be gets underway in earnest this weekend with the opening matches in the four groups.
All the games feature under-23 sides, although the sides that qualify for Athens will be allowed to strengthen their squad with over-age players.
Cameroon, the reigning Olympic champions, and Nigeria, the 1996 gold medallists, both have tough starts in their respective groups, playing away from home.
But both under-23 squads have recently shown what they are capable of by reaching the final of the All-Africa Games football tournament in Abuja, Nigeria, where Cameroon won gold by beating their hosts 2-0 in the final.
Cameroon travel to take on the largely unknown Democratic Republic of Congo in Kinshasa on Sunday.
The former Zaire, might be one of the more illustrious names in African football history, but such has been the chaotic nature of the game there over the last decades that they have rarely entered any junior competitions.
Nigeria, who have lost the battle to use Inter Milan ‘wunderkind’ Obafemi Martins, play away in Egypt in group A.
Many of the teams have been affected by the Fifa ruling that European clubs are not obliged to release players called up for the weekend’ s qualifiers, because they are not on the co-ordinated international calendar.
However some sides have been able to negotiate the release of key players, for instance South Africa will have defender Nasief Morris from Greek club Panathinaikos, for the trip to Ghana after he played in the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday night.
