Football: lionesses to reemerge today after 14-month ‘sabbatical’

The Cameroon Football Federation, FECAFOOT is expected to see the Morocco game as the start of a new rebuilding process for the

The senior women’s national football team of Cameroon will lock horns with Morocco this evening in an international friendly.The match will kick off at 6pm Cameroon time, 5pm in Morocco. It will take place at the 10 thousand capacity seater Père Jégo Stadium in Casablanca in Morocco. In the buildup to the fixture, the Indomitable Lionesses have been finalizing preparations in Casablanca in the last 48 hours under the guidance of head coach Jean Baptiste Bisseck and his collaborators.

The players summoned for the fixture by the team’s technical bench include the celebrated goal-scoring quartet of Nchout Njoya Ajara, Gabrielle Aboudi Onguene, Lamine Mana and Naomi Eto.  The Casablanca game is expected to help Morocco, who are the reigning vice champions of the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, to begin effective preparations ahead of the upcoming delayed 2024 edition of continental championship.

The tournament which was originally scheduled for last year, will be taking place in Morocco in July this year with the North African nation organizing the event for the second successive edition running.

Cameroon’s first game in 14 months

For Cameroon, Tuesday’s fixture will be the first game that the Indomitable Lionesses will be featuring in, in nearly 14 months. Before today’s game, the last time that four-time vice African champions played an international match was February 2024. That was when the Indomitable Lionesses entertained the Super Falcons of Nigeria in Lagos on February 26 in the African regional qualifiers to the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.  

Nigeria picked a 1-0 win in the game to knock Cameroon out of the qualifying series following the goalless draw that the two nations had settled for three days earlier in the first leg fixture in Douala.

Morocco game to launch Cameroon’s rebuilding process

Unlike Morocco which is leveraging Tuesday’s game with eyes on the forthcoming continental championship, the match means a lot more for team Cameroon. The Cameroon Football Federation, FECAFOOT and the entire technical and administrative body surrounding the women’s national team is expected to value and use the Morocco game as a significant start of a new rebuilding process for the national team. This, in an approach that is deemed to be similar to what then head coach, Carl Enow Ngachu and FECAFOOT did when he came on board as trainer in the early 2000s. The Morocco game comes after one of the most challenging times in Cameroonian women’s football.

It comes after a terrible fall from grace to grass that has, in the last two years, seen Cameroon failing to qualify for the women’s Africa Cup of Nations for the first time. Kenya eliminated the Indomitable Lionesses in September 2023 in the race to the delayed 2024 edition of the African championship which will take place in Morocco.

The failure to make the 2024 tourney was the only time that Cameroon was missing out on the continental championship since it was introduced 34 years ago.  Shortly after the women’s AFCON shocker, Nigeria also knocked Cameroon out of the race to the women’s tournament of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.

The elimination from the race to the 2024 Olympic Games meant Cameroon will not be featuring in any single major women’s football tournament for at least four years. The last time Cameroon featured in a major tournament was in 2022 during the women’s AFCON and could only return to any big event by next year if the country qualifies for the 2026 series of the African championship.

Algeria Cameroon’s first obstacle in rebuilding process

The first opponent that Cameroon is expected to lock horns with in the course of the rebuilding is Algeria. The Indomitable Lionesses will face the Algerians later this year in the second round of the qualifiers to the 2026 women’s AFCON. A win for Cameroon across the two-legged duel will hand the Indomitable Lionesses a qualification ticket for the 2026 continental competition.

That ticket will itself, open doors for Cameroon to make to the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup which could be Cameroon’s first appearance in the global competition since France 2019.