Football - Cameroon: André Onana "snobs" Roger Milla: The controversy on many lips

The scene is brief, almost harmless in appearance. On Sunday, in one of the stands of the military stadium in Yaoundé, André Onana crosses the stands under the gaze, greets here and there, then passes in front of Roger Milla. No gesture. No look. Nothing. Two passages, two silences. Immediately, the image freezes, repeats, interprets. And very quickly, it goes beyond the scope of the match Colombe – Victoria United (4-1) which was played on the pitch, to become a political object in the microcosm of Cameroonian football.

In a first account, widely relayed by spheres close to the Cameroonian Football Federation (Fécafoot), the gesture is described as a «scandal». Onana appears there as a customary player of the gaps, unable to measure the symbolic weight of his actions. The absence of a greeting is not read as an oversight, but as a moral offense. Because opposite, he is not just any former player: Roger Milla embodies a national memory, a living heritage. 

"It is not a simple oversight, it is said there and there, but a lack of respect that is difficult to accept, especially in a country where the memory and symbols of football occupy a sacred place." 

Onana’s gesture would then be calculated. Some equate it with a break with the legend of the 1990 World Cup, now reputed to be close to the president of the Fécafoot Samuel Eto'o with whom the goalkeeper of Trabzonspor broke all ties.

But this interpretation, apparently consensual, is directly contested by another camp. On the side of the National Union of Cameroonian footballers (Synafoc) led by another former footballer - Gérémi Njitap, reputed to be at odds with Samuel Eto'o - the story radically changes its nature. Here, the Onana case is perceived as a constructed, instrumentalized, almost opportunistic indignation. The heart of the problem would not be the gesture itself, but the identity of the one who posed it. In other words: Onana would pay for her supposed positioning in a field of forces dominated by the opposition between Samuel Eto'o and his detractors.

Double standards (?)
Because in the background, it is indeed this fracture that resurfaces. The defenders of Onana recall a specific precedent: "In Morocco, during the AFCON 2025 draw, Samuel Eto'o offered a show of calculated contempt by greeting all the African legends... except Gérémi Njitap. A scene repeated with surgical precision in the return flight: greet the entire plane, except for the former teammate. At the time, the same people who are offended today by Roger Milla applauded the "character" and the "firmness" of the president of the Fécafoot. The act was justified by personal grudges or supposed betrayals," recalls journalist Jacques Marcel Itiga. This double standard becomes the central argument of Onana’s supporters, who denounce a variable-geometry morality.

From then on, the incident in the military stadium ceases to be a simple matter of courtesy. It becomes a revelation. On one hand, a vision of Cameroonian football structured around tutelary figures, where respect for the elders constitutes an unbridgeable red line. On the other, a more political reading, where indignations are suspected to be weapons in a battle of influence. In this context, greeting — or not greeting—is no longer a neutral gesture. It’s a charged act.