Soccer Against the Enemy

by Simon Kuper

  Could the new Lions do as well without him? “No one is indispensable. Without Pelé Brazil won matches, but the presence of Pelé in a team motivates the other players. My presence had the same effect.”

  Pelé wanted to become president of Brazil. How ambitious was Milla? Would he like to become, say, manager of Cameroon? “To become a manager you have to be appointed, and since I must wait I am content with my current post for the moment.” What about minister of sport? “Beeeh,” he growled. “Since to become minister one must be appointed, one must wait. I would not refuse if they asked me to contribute something.” It was an exciting time for him: after his post-career panic, he had found a post that seemed to offer a bright future, and at 40, he was starting a new life. It was why he spoke to me for free, apologized for Wembley and even refused to insult Omam-Biyik. The young man who had fought with critics on the streets of the Yaoundé had become a careerist. But I was told he was kidding himself: he has no education, and thus no chance of becoming a minister.

  Finally, could he describe Roger Milla? “You journalists must do that. I cannot say Milla is this or that, but I am a man who likes to have contact with everyone, my nature is to discuss with everyone, no matter what they are. And further: I am a simple boy, as you see.”

  A number of Cameroonians I met told me, “You have a very good player in your country. Paul Parker!” Cameroonians follow black players, and I was often told that Africans were the best players in Europe: Abedi Pele at Olympique Marseille, George Weah at Paris St Germain, Peter Ndlovu at Coventry. Certainly Africans have done well in Europe, but the striking fact is that no Cameroonians have. Milla did little of note, Thomas Nkono spent ten years with the second club in Barcelona, Español, and most other players from the 1990 side are still with minor European clubs. Makanaky, a star at the World Cup, was not even a Toulon regular in 1990. “We were watching the match against Argentina, with some friends,” says Peter Bosz, a Dutchman who played with Makanaky at Toulon, “and I told them, ‘Watch that number 20, he plays for us but he’s useless.’ ” And then I see him beating men and helping his defense, unbelievable.”

  African players in France face constant humiliations. Toulon had trouble finding a flat for Makanaky because landlords would not accept a black tenant. It is therefore natural that, as Bosz says, Makanaky was an isolated figure at the club. “I can’t judge whether all the Cameroon team are like that,” Bosz added, “but it’s obviously not for nothing that none of them play for big clubs. They’re very private. Joseph Bell, the goalkeeper, who played for us for a season, was like that too. Always alone in a room. A bit antisocial really. But apparently they don’t behave like that when they’re together.” Soccer is about confidence, and it is easy to see how Africans in Europe might lack some. A manager picking a team has no trouble leaving out his African, who has no allies among the players and no name in Europe.

  But if that is why Cameroonians have failed, then why have so many other African players succeeded? Professor Paul Nkwi, a Cameroonian anthropologist, suggested the answer to me. The players who have done best in Europe, he pointed out, are from the Anglophone nations of Africa: Abedi Pele is Ghanaian, Stephen Keshi (Anderlecht’s sweeper for many years) is Nigerian, Charlie Musonda of Anderlecht is Zambian, George Weah is Liberian, and Peter Ndlovu is Zimbabwean. The only Francophone African who has done as well is Youssouf Fofana, the Ivorian of Bordeaux. The former English colonies have provided the successes, the French colonies, the flops, and the difference, said Nkwi, is down to their styles of government.

  The British colonials in Africa lived in “reserved areas” and spent their time in “special clubs,” away from the natives; the French preached that all men are equal. Each French colony was nominally part of France, and the professed French purpose was to turn Africans into Frenchmen by means of education. British colonization being openly racist, Africans from these colonies learned to expect racism. “Look at me,” said Nkwi, who is a Cameroonian Anglophone. “I studied in Switzerland for six years, I knew there would be racism, there was, and I could deal with it.” Or as Nii Lamptey, a Ghanaian, puts it: “You can piss on me, you can shit on me, I don’t care.” Lamptey made his debut for Anderlecht at 16 and scored in each of his first five matches.

  The funny thing is that Cameroonians believe that players who go to Europe get worse. The Anglophone TV presenter Ignatius Fon Echekiye, Cameroon’s Desmond Lynam, cited Nkono. “Before he went to Europe,” said Fon Echekiye, “until the ball has hit the net, don’t be sure you have scored—his reflexes were that good. But now Nkono says to his defenders, ‘You stand there, I stand here.’ ” In Europe, players learn to minimize energy expenditure. So players who come back from Europe no longer have the same kind of endurance, and though their raw talent is shaped, we feel they come back worse.”

  With only 12 million inhabitants, Cameroon is the most successful soccer nation in Africa, but Cameroonians think they should have done better. They see the 1982 World Cup as the one that got away.

  When Cameroon set off for the Spanish World Cup, they were determined not to be a second Zaire. Zaire’s debacle in 1974 had inspired the theory that the Black African game was embryonic, and Cameroon’s sole instructions in 1982 were not to lose too heavily. Black Africans must not be made fools of again.

  At the World Cup Cameroon was hailed as a marvel. The country nobody could find on the map gained three draws and failed to reach the second round only because their goal analysis of one for, one against was worse than Italy’s two for, two against. Cameroon just defended. Their 0-0 draws with Poland and Peru passed with hardly a chance for either team, except that Milla scored a goal against Peru that was disallowed (even though the Peruvian medicine men themselves had predicted that Peru would lose. Also, it was never a foul). Against Italy, the Lions were heading for another 0-0 when suddenly the Italians scored. The Africans equalized immediately, and then shut down the game, against the team that went on to win the World Cup. They went home the only country never to have lost in the World Cup, but home they went, and they saw that they should have done better. They blamed the coach. Initially, Cameroon had appointed the Dutch manager Kees Rijvers to take them to Spain. Rijvers was an eccentric, but he had a coaching pedigree. On the way to Holland to sign the contract, the Cameroonian delegation stopped in Paris. The French showed them a man named Jean Vincent and persuaded the Cameroonians to sign him. “The French care about Africa because it’s the only place where they can flog their stuff,” says the South African journalist Mark Gleeson, overstating the case.

  Vincent was a bad choice. The French in Cameroon have tended to learn the intricacies of tribal politics rather quickly. Every player, minister of sport, and assistant masseur tries to get players of his own tribe into the Lions, and a manager who plays their games will not be picking the team on merit. The goalkeepers’ debate of the past decade—should Bell play, or Nkono?—was in part tribal. To have appointed a Cameroonian would have been like making Graham Taylor England manager in the knowledge that he would fill the team with players from Lincolnshire. A Frenchman was almost as bad. The other argument against Vincent is that he came from the French second division. The French pushed him solely because he was a Frenchman. He was the latest in Cameroon’s long list of obscure European managers. The Frenchman Roux, their first manager in 1960, was the local sales representative for Land Rover cars.

  Nowadays, Cameroon’s managers tend to be foisted on the country by embassies anxious for propaganda coups. The Soviets, who had run few successful projects in Cameroon (they once set up an agricultural university, but taught through interpreters) managed to place Valeri Nepomniachi in charge of the Lions for the 1990 World Cup. This was good news for world Communism, but not so good for Cameroon. “Nipo,” or “the Russian” (the Cameroonians never mastered his name) came from the Soviet second division, spoke no French, and could talk to his players only through the driver at the Russian Embassy, who liked to improve Nipo’s messages with h
is own ideas. Imagine what the Lions might have done in 1990 under Franz Beckenbauer.

  I had come to Cameroon with a theory I wanted to test: that the 1990 World Cup boosted tourism to the country. For a start, the World Cup reminded people that Cameroon exists, a prerequisite for any tourist boom. Then, Cameroon got a good press. For a month we were told daily that this was a happy-go-lucky place with lots of voodoo, and the comparisons with Brazil cannot have hurt either. Tourism matters to Cameroon: the economy being what it is, a couple of hundred thousand extra visitors make a difference.

  At the ministry of tourism I found the press officer reading France Football at his desk. I asked for an interview with the Minister, but was told that this was impossible: the minister had a lot on his mind because Biya, hoping to please the voters, was about to change his cabinet. Instead, I spoke to David Douala Diboti, the civil servant in charge of promoting tourism. Had soccer helped? “Enormously! You see, many people do not know where countries like Senegal, the Ivory Coast and the Congo are. Often they do not even know they are in Africa. The World Cup put Cameroon on the map.” How had the ministry used the World Cup? He caved in. “I will be frank. We neglected to use it. We missed the opportunity. I regret that now.” Had the ministry produced a single item of publicity, a poster for example, featuring the Lions? “Not one.”

  As we spoke, I felt that I had just given him an idea—that that day, for the first time, he had seen the potential of the World Cup—and when I left he suggested that the ministry might buy copies of my book and give them to European tour operators. It did not strike me as a brilliant plan. But imagine if after the World Cup, pictures of Roger Milla had appeared on the walls of European travel agencies: of Milla dancing by some corner flag, grinning his gap-toothed smile, and enjoining, “Visit Cameroon!”

  A Cameroonian never calls himself a soccer fan: that he is speaks for itself. Charles was a fan too. One of the unemployed market sellers, he theoretically sold books, but as no one ever bought any he passed the time talking to passersby. He and I chatted about life and established that we were born in the same year, and I felt that if I had been a Cameroonian I would be selling books in Yaoundé market too. Charles failed to sell me anything, of course, but when he heard why I was in Yaoundé he lent me a book he would not sell, a monograph on Cameroonian soccer. He also invited me to the women’s Cup final that Sunday. I had read that Cameroonian women’s soccer was a popular sport that drew thousands of spectators.

  On Sunday, I collected Charles on the way to the Omnisports. He had instructed me to wait in front of the bar in his quartier’s main street (its only street), and to tell anyone who tried to mug me that I was a friend of his. Thankfully he was waiting when I arrived. First we went to see his hut. Urine flowed in the ditches and children sat about. Charles lived in two tiny rooms, each a little bigger than a cupboard, which contained a stereo, records and books. I nodded and we walked to the Omnisports.

  The stadium clock was broken, the toilets were locked, and the stands were uncovered, except the presidential terrace, which also had a canvas sunscreen. Thanks to the weather the Omnisports was a nicer place to be that November Sunday than a British stadium. The pitch, though battered, was the largest expanse of grass in that bare city, and in the heat it looked delicious. A military band played as the minister of youth and sports shook the players’ hands. The finalists were Nifi Forestière of Yaoundé and Cosmos of Douala.

  Five thousand spectators had turned up, more than any women’s match in Europe can attract, but they were not real fans. This was a day out, an escape from men’s soccer, where you care who wins and where you demand quality. The fans enjoyed this match as a parody of the real thing: when a Nifi forward attempted a bicycle kick and missed the ball, they had hysterics, and when the Nifi keeper headed the ball rather than catch it there was half a minute of applause and laughter. Whenever a player was injured three Red Cross men would sprint up, tuck her under their arms (they had no stretcher) and sprint off again, to suggestive cheers. The mood was sunny, and when Nifi scored with a fine header and everyone cheered, it felt like Africa at its best—until the military band struck up to celebrate the goal. Nifi won 1-0.

  Once, in a game between PWD Bamenda and Tonnerre Yaoundé (a club secretly funded by the government), a Tonnerre striker rounded the keeper and patted the ball towards an empty net. Out of nowhere, a Bamenda fan leaped onto the pitch and cleared the ball from the line. Ten thousand fellow fans followed him, and the game was abandoned. Riots are common when a Francophone side visits Bamenda, capital of Northwestern Province, and the Army has shot soccer rioters on the streets. To Anglophones, PWD Bamenda is the pride of the Province; to Francophones, the “secessionist” club. Either way, Cameroonians agree that soccer is politics by other means.

  One of the favorite stories of Anglophones in Cameroon concerns the soccer Cup final of 1979. Against all odds, PWD reached the final that year. However, on their way to Yaoundé for the match, the team and its president, Ni John Fru Ndi, the current SDF leader, were stopped at a checkpoint and thrown into jail by a policeman of the Bassa tribe. (Dynamo Douala, Bamenda’s opponents in the final, was a largely Bassa club.) PWD eventually reached Yaoundé, but the night before the final, or so the story goes, a cook put a sedative in their food. PWD lost the match 3-1, and several fans killed themselves. Anglophones tell the story often, because it seems to them to express a moral of Cameroonian history: Francophones cheat Anglophones. For Northwesterners, the distinction between the club, PWD, and the party, SDF, is a fine one.

  “The ordinary Francophone is corrupt,” Barnabas Azeh told me. “Francophones believe in brutality.” I had woken Azeh up, but when he heard my topic he spoke to me in his pyjamas. Hearing him attack Francophones, I pointed out that he wrote for the Cameroon Tribune, the paper that prints Biya’s photograph on its front page. “I don’t work for the government paper because I love the government,” he answered morosely, “I do it because I need the money.”

  Just then a new scandal was breaking. A few days before I arrived, two sides fighting relegation, PWD and Colombe Sangmelima, had played the last match of the league season. It was a rescheduled match: originally, it was to have been played in Bamenda, but when the state of emergency was declared there it was cancelled and brought eastwards. PWD had had trouble training before the match, as the state of emergency forbade gatherings of more than three people in the Northwest.

  Since Sangmelima was Biya’s home town, the game struck many as a rerun of the elections. It was played behind closed doors, with even the press barred, and only soldiers present. Colombe won 1-0. I asked Azeh whether the match had gone off fairly, and he answered, logically, that no one knew.

  The result left four sides, including Colombe and PWD, equal at the bottom of the first division on 22 points each. Which two of the four were to go down? The details were beyond me, but the question was whether their goal analysis over the whole season should determine the order, or just the goal analysis of the matches the four teams had played against each other. FECAFOOT, the Cameroonian FA, had to decide.

  I am not sure which system they chose. All I know is that the relevant committee voted on the matter, and PWD and Diamant Yaoundé were relegated. What is clear is that since a vote had to be held, the correct method of computing the table was plainly in doubt, and secondly, that the final table thus produced was predictable. Travelling through Europe, I had found many cases of FAs discriminating against certain teams—Nikolai Starostin could say a few words on the subject—but only cases from the past. Stalin and Beria are dead now, and European soccer is fair. In Cameroon, I saw the old tricks still being played.

  As in England, the Cup final in Cameroon ends the soccer season and is its highlight. Perhaps the Cameroonian Cup final is an even bigger deal than ours, for whereas minor royals hand over the FA Cup, the Cup final in Cameroon is the one popular ritual that the president of the republic always attends. It is a tradition dating back to the first final
, on Assumption Day, 1935, played before the French colonial governor, Repiquet. The president has to be there: in 1991, with the match previews already in the kiosks, Biya went on vacation to Europe and the game was postponed until his return.

  This year there was a more serious problem. Biya had not appeared in public since the rigged elections, and it was feared that if he did show up he would be shot, or booed, or at best ignored. The president of FECAFOOT admitted to me that the authorities had considered calling off the final altogether. So there was general relief, two days before the match, when the first item on the radio evening news was that, “The Head of State, His Excellency Paul Biya, will on Sunday November 29th preside over the finals of the national soccer Challenge Cup.” The report did not mention that this had ever been in doubt. The second item was that Biya had formed a new government.

  The final that year was between Diamant Yaoundé, freshly relegated to the second division, and Olympique Mvolye, already in the second division. Mvolye was the richest and most bizarre club in Cameroon. Only three years old, they had been founded by a wealthy man named Damas Ombga. Ombga had earned his money buying arms for Biya and taking his cut. He was said to be the power behind Biya’s throne (slip Ombga £50,000 and Biya gives you a seat in the cabinet), and he had modelled his club on Olympique Marseille. He had chosen the club’s name to evoke the original “OM” and he dressed his team in a blue-and-white replica uniform of the French champions. As to the name “Mvolye,” it is the village where he was born. “What do guys like that do when they become filthy rich?” Professor Nkwi asked rhetorically. “They are too uneducated to join the cabinet, so they build a tar road into their village and create a club overnight,” and he drove me up the tar road through Mvolye, which took about three minutes. “Twenty years ago all this was bush,” said Nkwi. Now Mvolye is a mini-suburb of Yaoundé, in part thanks to Ombga’s road. On a grander scale than Ombga, though on the same principle, the late president of the Ivory Coast built the largest cathedral in the world in his village of birth.