Captain Vincent Aboubakar is bearing immense pressure from all over Cameroon to lift the Africa Cup, but he showed he had broad shoulders ahead of the second game against Ethiopia on Thursday (5pm) in Yaoundé. “He was impressive in cold blood on both penalties“during the opening match against Burkina Faso (2-1), underlines Claude Le Roy, African champion with the Indomitable Lions in 1988.
“My captain was Émile Mbouh, recalls the “blond Sorcerer” who played ten CAN, a record. Captain, it’s a very important role in all African teams, the relay, the one who passes the messages“The immense Roger Milla was never a captain,”he is an artist, he must be left to his art and he does not have to deal with contingency“, justifies Le Roy.
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The Cameroonian football legend also approves of the choice of “Abou”. “He was the oldest on the team, he has to take the armband, so he has even more desire to do well“, he explains to AFP, because seniority in the team often takes precedence. In the past, “Doctor” Abega, Emmanuel Kundé, Stephen Tataw, Rigobert Song or Patrick Mboma have also been the captains of the “den” for their pedigree.
“‘Abou’ has a lot of experience in this competition“, underlines his coach, Toni Conceiçao. Above all, he made history by signing the winning goal with a magnificent volley at the end of the 2017 final against Egypt, the fifth CAN of the Indomitable Lions. The striker of Al -Nassr Riyad, trained at the Cotonsport Garoua school, “is respected by his teammates, he represents the coach very well, he is a leader, adds the Portuguese. He’s a great player on the pitch and off it too..” “And then Vincent speaks the same language as me (from a trip to Porto), it is an important factor“, adds Toni.
In the opening match, while Burkina was leading (1-0) and the shadow of a failure hovered over the Olembé stadium, the foot of the “capi” did not tremble, a “peno” to right, one on the left, even if Cameroon’s game was not crazy. “He tried to compensate by going for the balls in the middle to put them away, when normally he had to be in the axis, to prevent the defenders from playing“, comments Milla, who passed through Valenciennes 31 years before Aboubakar. “But with his very good kick, he scored two penalties“, adds the icon of the 1990 World Cup.
Against Burkina, “he was decisive, but the mad desire he had to pull off a hat trick made him thwart a little“, nuance Le Roy. He would have joined Mboma, author of a hat-trick against Zimbabwe at CAN 2004 (5-3). “He became obsessive, on two or three occasions he forgot the collective a little, he agreed at the end of the match“, believes Le Roy, consultant for Canal Plus, adding that recognizing this small sin confirms that it is “a great captain“.
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“The proof, at the end of the match he was full of lucidity he was not satisfied with the collective quality of the game provided and blamed himself for certain errors“, adds Le Roy. “Given the quality of the team we have, we did not provide good football. Honestly, we don’t just have to see that we scored two goals, we have to play better, we can do better in front of our fans.“said the former Valenciennes player.
“My performance depends on my teammates” pointed out the capi. And when asked what message the man with the armband had for his teammates, he put his hands forward: “No, no, they know! In this team we are a family, as they say the dirty laundry is washed as a family, we will see what we are missing and we will work to improve ourselves“.
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