The mood in the national team is one of ‘no peace no war’.

Ever since the debacle of the Indomitable Lions in the 2010 World cup in South Africa, the mood in the national team has never been serene again. Besides the intestinal quarrels and clashes of egos among players, the squad is plagued with numerous other problems such as the persisting difference between the national football governing body, Fecafoot and the titular ministry of sports and Physical education over the management of the national team. The tactical and technical acumens of the technical staff have also been put to question.

Faced with this plethora of problems, football authorities have always applied cosmetic changes that are not far reaching enough to solve the problems once and for all. In what football pundits describe as treating the symptoms and leaving the virus, the fate of the darling national football team was removed from the hands of Paul Le Guen and given to Javier Clemente and then Denis Lavagne, after the failure of the lions to qualify for the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.

After the World Cup, instead of doing a diagnosis to identify what went wrong; a few players were made to bell the cat and unofficially banished from the national team.

An attempt by players to decry the opacity in the management of the squad by refusing to play a friendly against Algeria, was met with the iron fist of the federation, who suspended the captain and vice for instigating the strike action. Whereas, efforts to usher change at the federation were nibbed in the bud by the dismissal of some top and icon figures from Fecafoot.

Hence in this backdrop of players’ suspension, silencing of dissenting voices at Fecafoot and the axe of Damocles hanging over Denis Lavagne as his contract is yet to be officially made public and talks of an eventual bid to replace him, one cannot say the atmosphere within the national team is serene. There is no open conflict within or outside the squad but this does not however mean there is peace in the house. Players unjustly held responsible for the failure in south Africa or punished for poisoning the atmosphere within the national still have the after taste bitter in their mouths and they may have forgiven what transpired but not forgotten it. So too is the case with the scapegoats of what has become known as the Marrakech gate scandal who are yet to come to terms with the fact that their team mates failed to show solidarity with them. More so, questioning the competence of the coach and circulating information about his eventual replacement at a time when the team is preparing for the crucial qualifiers for the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations and 2014 World Cup, is not in a way to enable the coach work in a good mind set.