Published: Eto'o Fils, National hero

The message of. Samuel Eto'o, prize list that there is no need to recall here, is now at the head of the Cameroonian Football Federation since this Saturday. And throughout the electoral campaign, the first in which an entire people was interested in as well as people and personalities from elsewhere, the shared feeling was that we would not touch the seat of the goleador, which was already acquired in his minds. Eto’o is indeed one of those stars to whom we would forgive everything, those we call “national fetishes”, like his friend Didier Drogba, for whom the Ivorians had flooded the front of the FIF on the day of submitting his candidacy. This affair on the edge of the Ebrié lagoon is not yet over. With Eto’o and Drogba, Africans have this feeling of “the right man in the right place”, so high have they set the bar on the footballing continent. Not only in terms of talent but also aura and charisma. Finding such enthusiasm around African players, since their absence from the lawns, is difficult.

But if the vast majority of the public expected the election of “pichichi”, he knew well that it wasn't his, public, to vote. And if Samuel Eto’o expected it too, he knew that he had a system in front of him – whose helmsman Seidou Mbombo Njoya was his friend some time ago – that he knew and that nothing would be easy.

Very early, candidate Eto’o took his matter seriously, surrounding yourself with known communicators, developing and presenting his project for Cameroonian football, traveling the country accompanied by Cameroonian and African stars, lobbying, receiving moral support from everywhere. But “the big one 9 » as his supporters call him, almost failed to be a candidate on the basis of his Spanish nationality, the subject of dual nationality constantly debated in Cameroon. But Eto’o showed its “Cameroonianness” by the levers activated, playing on his aura and anticipating opposing attacks. This is how on D-day, the whole world saw a star in the oven and in the mill live, to the point of securing votes, sometimes using a sharp verb or a noticeable physical presence in front of a charter of unidentified voters. The larva of the electoral fraud was crushed before becoming a butterfly. The anger contained by the man disappeared when the results were announced, which generated the satisfaction of an entire people. And the outgoing candidate, with all courtesy, quickly broadcast a message of congratulations to the new president on social media.

The seat is now the top scorer in Cameroonian history, ambassador of Qatar 2022. A whole project awaits him for his country. The last Cameroonian club to win the African Champions League is Canon de Yaoundé, in 1980. As for the Confederation Cup, it was the Union of Douala in 1981, at the time when this competition was still called the African Cup Winners' Cup.

Now, « let’s go to work », said Samy.

there are more movements of Africans within their continent than from Africa to the outside