Credit: Twitter
Unsettling information regarding the potential match-fixing activity of Fécafoot president Samuel Eto'o has come to light after he agreed to promote a team from Elite 2 to the top division. The ongoing controversy involving the president of the Cameroonian Football Federation in recent years has a new chapter.
The head of Cameroon football is again in the news just a few days after his former vice-president, Njalla Quan, made broad accusations against him, claiming that he exempted André Onana from the national squad. He is allegedly involved in a match-fixing scandal this time. According to the recording that was posted on social media, Eto'o spoke with the president of Victoria United, a team that recently secured promotion from Cameroon's second division and with which the forward might have been involved.
The conversation, which took place in January 2023, has Samuel Eto'o promising to promote the team to the top level, saying, "Opopo must go up to the first division. That is our goal. It's our Federation. There are four of us, you and 2 others. Victoria United will go up." A few months later, the club, which had actually been in the middle of the pack, was elevated to first place and won the championship because Fécafoot declared second-place Stade de Bertoua ineligible.
"Stay calm, we will grant you the three points and we suspend the referee. But let me at least go back to Cameroon. He arrived on the 3rd (January) at night. So we'll see you in the office on the 4th. Anyway, I'm going to rule out and disable this referee," he was seen saying further in the leaked conversations.
In the end, Victoria United won the second level of Cameroon in April, earning promotion. And that is the second promotion in three years, as in 2020, when Eto'o was in charge, they went from third to second, which now appears strange too.
It should also be remembered that the Opopo President interfered with the game against Tonnerre by acquiring the ball and as a result, he received a smoke screen match ban and a fine of 500,000 FCFA instead of the more severe punishment that would have been meted out to the teams' field-violence-involved fans at Stade of Bertoua and Lausanne of Yaoundé where both teams failed in their attempts to manage their supporters.
