Football - Cameroon: Super Cup final turns into a fiasco

The final of the Cameroon Super Cup, played this Thursday, February 26, 2026 at the military stadium in Yaoundé, was supposed to kick off the season with prestige. It ended in confusion.

Pitting Panther of Ndé, winner of the 2025 Cameroon Cup, against the defending champion Colombe du Sud, the meeting turned into an open crisis when the Cameroon champions left the field to protest against a penalty awarded to the opposing team. The referee put an end to the meeting without the trophy being awarded, under the jeers of a bewildered audience.

A penalty as a trigger
Colombe opens the score from the 3rd minute by Lima and seems to master their subject. But in the 64th minute, the referee grants a penalty to the Panther of Ndé, transformed by Mbarga for the equalization (1-1). The decision triggers the anger of the Colombe bench. After long protests, the players leave the field, heading to the locker rooms. A scenario that recalls the final of the AFCON 2025 where Senegal had adopted the same posture. With the difference that unlike Sadio Mané and his teammates, Richard Towa’s men refuse to resume the game.

But beyond the facts of the game, it is the context that gives this incident a political significance. A few days ago, during its general assembly, the president of the board of directors of Colombe, Dr. Doko Edjiane, publicly denounced unpaid bonuses attributed to the Cameroonian Football Federation (Fécafoot), chaired by Samuel Eto'o, who had kicked off the match. Trophy bonuses not paid, African participation unpaid, state subsidies never received: nearly 200 million CFA francs are missing from the club’s coffers according to its leaders. A rare outing in a Cameroonian football unaccustomed to frontal criticism of federal governance.

Colombe – Fécafoot, the time of the breakup?

"We are not accomplices of anything," the PCA hammered in front of its members, mentioning letters that remained unanswered. Officially, no referral from the Ministry of Sports has yet been initiated. Unofficially, defiance is established. In this climate of financial and institutional tension, the litigious penalty acted as a detonator. The abandonment of the land appears, for some observers, less as a reaction to an arbitral decision than as a gesture of rupture.

The sequel will now be played away from the spotlight. The file should go before the Federation’s Homologation and Discipline Commission, with the possibility of appeal. Colombe Sportive du Sud exposes itself to severe sanctions for abandonment of a match. In the meantime, the supporters returned home bitter, aware that the image of Cameroonian football, already weakened, has just suffered a new setback. The Super Cup was supposed to be a party. It turned into an indicator of deeper discomfort.