The hunt is on for any ballplayer on European playgrounds loosely related to anything Cameroonian. The making of the national side for yet another futile attempt on the World Cup front demands a hard reality check. Faced with a dearth of talent back home, the entire nation of Cameroon is spurring on football governing authorities to convince any fledging bi-national star or half-breed to join the Cameroonian squad.
This is nothing new, of course. For over a decade now, we have principally relied on hired guns, admittedly of Cameroonian stock. The situation is simply now getting a little bit ridiculous. When you look harder, the last international game we played in Yaounde could very well have been dubbed Tunisia v. Rest-of-The-World.
Let’s do the maths. Of the thirteen or so men who squarely and fairly beat Tunisia in Yaounde, none of them can exhibit a record of ever playing amateur or professional football in a significant way in Cameroon ; three or four got some professional training in a national sports academy ; over 80 per cent of them carry foreign passports and pay taxes abroad ; a fair number of them could not say ‘hello’ in any Cameroonian language.
All that is tilly-fally, isn’t it ? Perhaps. What is significant though is that the bona fide stars of the Cameroon squad, – Mr. Eto’o, Mr. Chedjou, Mr. Nkoulou, Mr. Makoun and Mr. Song to a lesser extent – are all Cameroonian-born and raised. They ply their trade with foreign passports on foreign soil. We have no qualms about that. Since there is no backup or replacement in sight back home, we have been forced to hire abroad. But the fact is that none of the ballplayers we have hired was likely to crack a first team spot on the national side of their respective native countries. My take is that they would not have joined us if they had a solid chance to play for Germany or France.
Mr. Itandje, to name only one, looked down on us scores of times and only accepted to play for us when all his hopes of ever playing for France were dashed. True, Mr. Itandje has performed beautifully, but he will never be another Thomas Nkono. Mr. Matip, Mr. Assou-Ekotto, Mr. Choupo-Moting and other imports are not on the same footing as Mr. Eto’o or Mr. Makoun, and will certainly never get close to the great homegrown strikers and midfielders we were blessed with.
Why are we then gunning for Mr. Ntep, Mr. Umtiti or Mr. Ngando, who are just o.k. ballplayers ? Why spend all our energy and lots of money in search of very ordinary footballers when we have been known to blabber about being a great nation of football ? We talk a lot, don’t we ? But the hard truth is that ordinary players in Europe are far better than anything we can expect from home. That alone should put our legendary yap to silence.
