ASEC Mimosas' recent elimination from the CAF Champions League has brought back to the fore a number of changes sought by the Mimosas supporters known as Actionnaires.
This way to the door! ASEC Mimosas were knocked out of the CAF Champions League by Esperance Tunis after a penalty shoot-out in their favor (4-2, 0-0 regulation time). The club's elimination from the CAF Champions League raised the ire of the "Actionnaires", as the yellow-black club's supporters are known.
For many, the blame for this latest failure on the African stage does not lie elsewhere. The Mimosas have not lifted the CAF Champions League since 1998. Their last African title was the Supercup against Esperance Tunis in February 1999. This exit against a club within their reach has reawakened the demons of division among many fans, who are calling for the departure of their president via social networks.
In their two matches against EST, ASEC Mimosas failed to score a single goal. Worse still, since the end of the CAF Africa Cup of Nations and the resumption of the continent's most prestigious club competition, the Mimosas had underperformed twice before facing Esperance. These were against Simba FC and WAC. In their last four African matches, the Sol Béni residents have suffered one defeat, drawn three and scored 0 goals.
" What can we expect from a team that has sold its top scorer (Sanakara Karamoko, editor's note) in the middle of a competition? I must admit that I haven't understood Me Roger Ouégnin's model for quite some time now," says Babou Eric, a former Africa Sports player and TV sports consultant. Indeed, almost all of the fans' recriminations stem from the fact that ASEC Mimosas is unable to retain its best players, who leave season after season, never to be properly replaced, including Sankara, who left for Wolfsberger in the middle of the CAF CL group stage.
"Sankara was only effective off the bench.There were matches where I played him as a starter and he didn't show anything. The players in our forward line are weak offensively," replied Julien Chevalier on this case, at an end-of-match press conference on April 6, 2024, at the Félix-Houphouët-Boigny stadium in Abidjan. The list of players sold by Asec over the last two seasons is as long as the arm: Traoré Benie (Nantes), Diakité Oumar (Reims), Konaté Karim (Salzburg), Ki-Aziz Stéphane (Young Boys), Zouzoua Pacôme (Young Boys), Yao Attohoula (Young Boys), Kramo Aubin (Simba FC), Sankara Karamoko (Wolfsberger), Zoungrana Mohamed (Mouloudia Club Alger)...
These departures have seriously weakened the 1998 African champion.But Roger Ouégnin explains: "I pay more than 109 monthly salaries to the workers of the Asec group. Maintaining Sol Béni costs 228, 658 euros (equivalent to the budget of some Ligue 1 clubs). But what resources do we have to meet these costs? Stadium admissions are insignificant and go to the CNACO. Partners' contributions are not enough. The real source of income is transfers. The door is therefore open to all kinds of departures...".
Apart from the fanatics of the yellow wall, the largest group of Mimosas supporters to whom the insignificant match revenues accrue, everyone is unanimous that Roger Ouégnin must hand over the reins to the shareholders. The man nicknamed the "specialized worker" has been at the club's helm since 1989, a 35-year reign without sharing. He is far ahead of the Congolese Moïse Katumbi, who recently claimed to be Africa's longest-serving club president.What's more, many fans and observers believe that ASEc Mimosas must return to what once made it so strong: training, like that which made the club grow with the likes of Zokora, Yaya Touré, Kolo Touré, Arthur Boka, Tiéné Siaka, Aruna Dindané, Copa Barry and others.
