New Football Season: Correcting Past Errors

The 2023-2024 football season in Cameroon rumbled off last September 27, 2023 with a Fauves Azur-Victoria United showdown at the Yaounde Military Stadium. The other day one matches in the two groups of the 19-club championship will be played on October 4, 2023.  The last sports season ended last Sunday, 24 September, 2023 with Fovu football club of Baham lifting the national cup after beating PWD of Bamenda 2-0. 
The State has offered six modern stadia to enhance Cameroon’s game in Limbe, Douala, Bafoussam, Yaounde and Garoua. As such, the youth have the necessary platform to exercise their talents at best. Cameroonians now have their fingers crossed as to what results the championship will produce at the end of the ongoing football season. Hopefully, stakeholders are working towards righting the wrongs of the previous season so that the current one lives up to the billing. The call for improvement on Cameroon’s local game has been loud and clear but results still remain wanting. There seems to be a lot of amateurism which greatly dampens the desire of footballers to showcase their talents and of the public to enjoy the king sports.
Will actors of football in Cameroon shun personal ego? Will bribery, match fixing, favouritism, poor coaching, and internal power tussling be abated?  Will coaches dig into new techniques to improve the game? Will clubs pay their players to stabilize their living conditions? Will the football nurseries be watered for better growth? Moreover, can the organizing body, which is one of the country’s 52 sporting federations, be an example of progress rather than a battle field for members? Such problems identified with Cameroon’s local game must be put to rest to revive the show. Cameroonians deserve better local football. 
Looking back memory lane, the last international trophy won by a Cameroonian club was in 1981 by Union Douala. Cameroon football is 60 years old this year having joined the African Football Confederation (CAF) in 1963. The early signs of Cameroon’s football greatness sparked in 1965 with Samuel Mbappe Lepe’s Oryx Douala winning the first-ever continental trophy for Cameroon against Stade Malien 2-1. Then followed the 1970s and 1980s football splendor for Cameroonian clubs. Canon and Tonnerre football clubs based in the nation’s political capital, Yaounde, as well as Union and Dynamo of the economic capital, Douala, made impressive outings for the country. In 1982, Cameroon made its first appearance at the World Cup in Spain playing all three group matches losing none and winning none.
Then came 1984 when Cameroon won its first Africa Cup of Nations beating Nigeria 3-1 in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. In 1990, Cameroon made a world-class exploit beating the then World champions, Argentina, in a world cup opening match by one to nil in Italy. And the anxiety of good football germinated and blossomed for Cameroon. That celebrated past which reconciled talent and success ignited a strong football bond between Cameroonians and the game. They became familiar with international victories and so local stadia were filled with spectators. The game aroused growing interest for fans. Football icons emerged in the likes of Roger Milla, Thomas Nkono, Josephe Antoine Bell, Ndoumbe Lea, Kunde Emmanuel, Awoudou Ibrahim, Mungam Dagobert, Njeya Rene, and many others. A later generation of Cameroon football idols came with Kana Biyick, Omam Biyick, Patrick Mboma, Eto’o Fils, Rigobert Song, Kalla Nkongo and goal keeper Alioum Boukar who even clinched the 2002 Africa Cup in Mali against Senegal on penalty shoot-out without having conceded any field goal in the whole tournament. Vincent Aboubakar is the shining star these days with the national team scoring decisive and spectacular goals for the homeland.
The start of a new football season in Cameroon brings hope, excitement, and reflection. It is an opportunity for fans, players, teams and managers to turn the page on several decades of disappointments. Only the Cameroon national team, the Indomitable Lions, has been saving the country’s football image with its five-time triumphs of the Africa Cup of nations in 1984, 1988, 2000, 2002, and 2017. This season opens up hopes for utter value of football progress in Cameroon and presents an excellent opportunity to rectify past errors on and off the pitch.
To rebuild performance, the new football season offers teams across Cameroon the chance to address the mistakes and shortcomings of the previous campaign. Team managers, coaches, players and spectators can identify the weaknesses of the local game and work towards implementing win-over solutions. Whether it is improving defensive strategies, enhancing team chemistry, or refining attacking tactics, this season serves as a fresh jump to rebuild team performance for better ...