The game will be the Indomitable Lionesses’ first competitive match in 20 months.
Cameroon will lock horns with Algeria this Thursday October 23 in the first leg of the final round of qualifiers to the 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations tournament. The Indomitable Lionesses showdown with the female Desert Foxes will be held at the Miloud Hadefi Stadium in the Algerian northwestern city of Oran. Cameroon is expected to claim a victory or avoid losing in the match to establish itself in a comfortable position of easily completing the qualification race during the return leg fixture in Cameroon on October 28.
In the buildup to the match, the team managed by head coach Jean Baptiste Bisseck had been rounding up preparations in Oran. The selection had been holding warmup sessions and other pre-game rituals. The last minutes programmed were all initiated to roundup what had been an expanded preparatory window for the team.
The team had camped for multiple months and played test matches against reigning African champions, the Super Falcons of Nigeria and the Atlas Lionesses of Morocco in preparation for the Desert Foxes challenge. Algeria is a little-known name in women’s football in Africa and globally.
The team has never qualified for a global competition and only made its first ever appearance in the quarterfinals of the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco in July this year. Despite the underdog status, the North African team is regarded as an outfit that can harm Cameroon. This, pundits say, is owing partly to the performance that the team had at the 2025 Women’s AFCON showpiece where the side completed the group stages without losing a single game after facing Nigeria, Botswana and Tunisia. The team was also eliminated in the quarterfinals on post-match penalties where they were beaten 4-2 by the Black Queens of Ghana.
Cameroon whose last competitive match is the game it played against Nigeria in February last year in the qualifiers to the 2024 Olympic Games, is battling to return to competitive tournament football for the first time since 2022. The team failed to qualify for the final phase of the Women’s AFCON for the first time when it missed out on the 2025 tournament and failed to qualify for 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup and the 2024 Olympic Games.
The poor run has been described as one of the lowest moment the Indomitable Lionesses team have had since its inception. Before the recent shambolic runs, the team had reached the finals of the Women’s AFCON four times, qualified for the FIFA Women’s World Cup twice in the last decade and made to the Olympic Games on one occasion.
