Rédaction Africa Links 24 with Journal du Cameroun
Published on 2024-02-29 08:14:15
In two years on the national team’s bench, Song has certainly experienced defeats, but he has also achieved something unprecedented.
He remains to this day the only Cameroonian coach to have qualified the Indomitable Lions for a World Cup (2022) and an African Cup (2024). An achievement that the Lions had not experienced since 2010. At that time, Paul Le Guen was the coach of the team.
However, Rigobert Song, who took over the selection a few weeks before the playoff match for the qualification to the 2022 Qatar World Cup, managed to qualify Cameroon against Algeria on their home turf in Blida. A field on which Algeria had never been defeated. And he didn’t stop there.
In the World Cup, he managed to raise the level of the Lions by allowing the team to advance to the first round with 04 points. Something unprecedented for a country that had finished last in the 2014 World Cup and second to last in 2010. It is even more of an achievement after the 1990 World Cup journey where the country reached the quarter-finals of the competition.
A contribution that the president of the Fécafoot, Samuel Eto’o, acknowledges, “He has brought a lot to this team, but the laws of football being what they are… We did not achieve our goals, and our executive committee and I do not see ourselves renewing the contract. I had the opportunity to discuss this with him. I gave our positions and now we have to think about the future, while wishing him a lot of success in his future career.”
A journey that resembles a tree hiding the forest. Because, if Rigobert Song can boast such a journey, it remains that he has not done better than his predecessor, Antonio Conceicao. The latter had succeeded in leading the team to the semi-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations in 2022. Whereas Rigo only just managed to qualify Cameroon for the round of 16 in the last AFCON. A miracle that did not last with the elimination against Nigeria.
Read the original article(French) on Journal du Cameroun
