Disagreements usually arise when it comes to choosing the coach, paying of bonuses, selection of players and the management of expeditions.

The incident leading to the annulment of the Algeria-Cameroon encounter in Marrakech once more revealed the age-old animosity and mutual suspicion that exist between the officials of the Cameroon Football Federation and the staff of the Ministry of Sports and Physical Education. Though the roles are clearly defined, they deliberately infringe on each others domain to satisfy their inordinate pecuniary interests at the detriment of the development of football in the country. The texts are clear; the national teams are properties of the State or country to which they belong; the State therefore as club owners take care about the running of the squad, hiring of coaches, payment of bonuses, transportation, lodging and equipment for official matches. However, when it comes to friendly matches this responsibility is bequeath on the national association which serve as administrative organs of football in each country. Their duty comprises the organisation and supervision of competitions within the country, management of players’ careers, and promotion of football activities in general.

Football has become a matter of money and due to the huge sums involved; officials turn to focus more on satisfying their insatiable quest for money than the promotion of football. This greed blurs their vision as they tend to flout the rules they themselves enacted in order to pursue the pecuniary goal. As such there is a clash of interest each time a new coach has to be designated for the Indomitable Lions or when it comes paying bonuses, managing expeditions or selecting players for the national team.

As for the choice of coaches, it is an open secret that the main criteria of choice is not competence but the mark up the coach in question is willing relinquish as kick backs to those who influence his appointment. The same principle prevails with the selection of certain players to the national team. Some pay money to obtain their selection while others surrender a certain percentage of their bonuses to the person who influence their selection. Concerning the management of expeditions, officials are more concerned about managing the allocated budget with frugality so as to have huge left-over’s, than ensuring the comfort and security of the delegation. While players are lodged in pairs in hotel rooms, the accompanying officials are well lodged alone in their spacious rooms and the heads of the various commissions spend more time forging and exaggerating bills than catering for members of the delegation.

As concerns the payment of bonuses, it has come to public notice that some professional players based abroad are more concerned with defending the national colours than collecting bonuses since they already earn fabulous sums of money in the respective clubs in the diaspora. Such was the case with Lauren Etame Mayer and recently with Samuel Eto’o. Yannick Noah was also mentioned at one time to earning a salary as psychological trainer of the Lions when in effect he had never received a dime. This money ends in the private pockets of some individuals from both the Ministry of Sports and Physical Education and Fecafoot.

It is apparent that the players’ revolt was born out of mistrust for Fecafoot given that the federation’s position is ambiguous when it comes to paying bonuses to players. For official matches the rates are well known and are paid by the government while for friendly matches where the bonuses are supposed to be paid by the federation, it is not clear bonuses will be paid for every encounter as regulations stipulate bonuses of presence, matches and qualification will be paid if need be. There is no specification as who or what determines the payment or not of bonuses. Players suspect that Fecafoot official exploit this lacuna in legislation to siphon bonuses for players in some friendly matches by declaring that it was not provided for in the contract. A case in point is the Algerian friendly which Fecafoot declared was interest free whereas, the Algerian football federation had projected to pay about FCFA18 million to the Cameroonian players. Moreso, one can question the logic of playing a friendly match for free when TV rights and over 80.000 tickets were sold. There is need for transparency in the management of the national team.