Roger Milla: I’m Just Disappointed With Samuel Eto’o Performance For Cameroon

In an interview with AfrikFoot on Wednesday, Cameroon soccer icon Roger Milla talks about the national team with mixed feelings.

Referring to the Indomitable Lions’ debacle at the 2010 World Cup, where they were eliminated in the first round, Milla says the squad that went to South Africa 2010 was shapeless. “We had no team, we had no coach, and this was what we alerted even before the World Cup,” he said.

Milla doesn’t feel the failure of Cameroon in South Africa was caused only by former coach Paul Le Guen, but by the entire team. He says everybody was responsible for the downfall of the once brilliant African team.

“The coach needed to carry out some major reforms before the tournament but nobody listened to him or us, who were shouting,” he says.

Coming down to the leader and captain of the team – Inter’s Samuel Eto’o, Milla says in Cameroon there is no leader, and that the leader is the team itself.

“In Cameroon, we don’t have to count on stars. The star we have is the squad itself. It is our cohesion that makes us strong. We’re a team that plays for a nation. We don’t have or need a star,” he cautions.

But as Roger once criticised Eto’o performance in the national team, he reiterates that Eto’o’s outing back home doesn’t satisfy him.

“I don’t have a personal problem with Eto’o, I have a problem with the kind of football he plays in the national team. I have told him before that one day he would be the boss of the team and he’d be the one to galvanise everyone. But he’s not producing what’s expected of him. We, their predecessors, built and left a strong team, and so we feel very bad to see the Lions in tatters today,” he laments.

Many Cameroonians are not happy at the moment with their national team, and many have aired their issues in search of a solution to revive the Lions, regarded as being in slumber.