By George Esunge Fominyen
Cameroon’s national football team is currently cruising through the initial stage of the two-phase qualifiers to the World Cup and Africa Cup of Nations to be hosted in 2010 by South Africa and Angola respectively. 
Looking at the Lions’ group that includes football minnows like Tanzania, Cape Verde and Mauritius some observers contend that Cameroon would emerge overall group winners even if they were to use a third rate side. So why are the Indomitable Lions playing their strongest men?
Unlike Cote d’Ivoire that dispensed with stars like Drogba and Kalou Bonaventure for their first games of the ongoing qualifiers, Cameroon is travelling with their full strength squad. Rigobert Song, Geremi Njitap, Samuel Eto’o, Idriss Kameni, Timothee Atouba just to name these few, are household names that bring shivers down the spine of any amateur footballer. A Tanzanian taxi driver asked the Camfoot.com special envoy to Dar Es Salam ahead of the Lions’ game there, why Cameroon needed to bring the whole squadron to play against their lowly Taifa Stars. When the same star-studded Lions breezed through Cape Verde in Yaoundé, some fans wondered why Otto Pfister did not allow the coach of the Olympic selection to use the game as a test for his players before the Beijing Games.
Well, it seems history has taught the Lions and their managers more lessons than their boastful fans could construe. To go by Captain Rigobert Song quoted in the Wednesday June 11, 2008 edition of Tanzania’s Guardian IPP newspaper, “we respect Taifa Stars because every country works hard so as to win and be able to qualify for the 2010 World Cup and Africa Nations Cup.” His coach, Otto Pfister, even told another Tanzanian daily that “Taifa stars are not underdogs”.
Both men were proved right when Tanzania doggedly held Cameroon to a goalless draw in the presence of their overjoyed President Ndugu Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete and notwithstanding the repeated attacks by Eto’o fils and other Cameroonian stars.
Leaving no room for surprises?
In fact, maybe the clearest answer to why Cameroon is travelling with its best team was given by Samuel Eto’o during his recent interview on CRTV (about the head-butting affair). He explained that the Lions are decided not lose concentration and commit the same errors of the past like playing to a 1-1 draw with Sudan (in 2004), which eventually cost them a place in the 2006 World Cup in Germany. No more over-confidence against “small football” nations, right? Use what you’ve got to get what you want, isn’t it?
One is tempted to buy into that logic, if one considers the recent “surprise” 0-0 tie between Madagascar and the Elephants of Cote d’Ivoire. The Ivoirians seemed to have undersestimated their Indian Ocean opponents thus leaving out some of their key men. After they drew with the Malagasy side, they recalled their top men but Botswana managed to hold them to a 1-1 draw. A worst case scenario could see the Ivoirians being held to another draw by Botswana and losing to Mozambique thus getting knocked out of a race they are favourites to win! We are not there yet. Cameroon on her part seems to be working on the old maxim: “prevention is better than cure”.
However, does success come every time you use a full squad against a small opponent? Won’t this instead tire Cameroon’s key players who are actually needed in phase two of the qualifiers when push comes to shove? Does this hammer to clamp down on minnows policy really work in the light of the 1-1 draw in? Would it not have been the most propitious time to start molding a new team? What are your perspectives? Everything is debatable.
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