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Last of the class in Group B of the CAF Champions League with 5 defeats in as many games, the defending champion of Cameroon is making headlines for the wrong reasons.
Never before has Coton Sport been in such bad shape on the African stage. The only Cameroonian representative in the CAF Champions League, the Garoua-based club has managed to pull off a feat, conceding 5 defeats in as many games. The unfortunate finalists of the 2008 edition are eliminated from the competition. Whose fault is it? Is the team a sub-standard version compared to their group B giants?.
A team decimated by departures
Marou Souaibou was the key to Coton Sport's qualification. The best Cameroonian player of last season scored 3 goals in the 4 games played during the qualifiers. Performances that allowed him to take part in his first World Cup (Qatar 2022) with the national team. Problem? The best offensive asset of Coton Sport joined the South African Orlando Pirates earlier this year. And this is not the only loss suffered by the club.
Two other major assets will leave the ship. They are the very experienced midfielder Felix Oukine and the best goalkeeper of last season, Anye Derrick. The former has joined Raal, a third division club in Belgium. The latter has signed with Maritzburg United in the South African first division. Without their best striker, midfielder and goalkeeper, what could Coton Sport hope for? "When a team is built and the best players leave, that's what happens," said coach Gabriel Haman.
Decimated by the departure of these three key players, the situation of the club has not improved with the cases of talents who have desires elsewhere. If Patient Wassou is waiting to sign with a foreign club, Kaïba Djawa would have left the club on the sly. After the defeat against Al Ahly (0-4) last Friday, the coach of Coton Sport has ensured that he has no news of the midfielder who was supposed to leave the club for a foreign adventure at the end of the current season. The player and his entourage seemingly have shown little or no patience.
Huge defensive errors
Coton Sport began the group stage of this Champions League with a more changed squad than the one that qualified through the group stages. Evidently from the first game against Mamelodi (1-3), we quickly understood that the task was difficult. In all positions, the defending champion of Cameroon has seen their defence easily crushed by their opponents. The midfielders were not very useful. At no time, Coton Sport has managed to pose the game or control the tempo. As a result, the strikers were rarely put in good conditions. As a result, the club scored only two goals.
The midfield of the Cameroonian club is to blame, but the defense is even more so. Gabriel Haman's men were overwhelmed by events, often being generous with their opponents. If the defensive errors were too numerous, we must not forget the poor saves of the goalkeeper, Gadin Allambatnan and his colleague Saliou Mamoudou who have conceded 14 goals between them. "There are realities that we discovered in the CAF Champions League: the level is a notch above, admits the coach. We have to look at what other top teams are doing and try to implement it at home to progress.
The ball is in the court of the club's leadership who clearly must revise their strategies coming into African interclub competitions.
