Cameroon Knows the Cleveland Force but Not the Pistons

“So, tell me,” said Stephen Tataw, an African tugging at the sleeve of an American in an Italian hotel. “Football--soccer football--it is not so popular in your country, yes?”

“Yes. No. Yes, it is not,” stammered the American.

“Why is this, do you think?”

“Because we are not so good, I think,” the man from Los Angeles said, straining to speak English with as much eloquence as a man who set foot in America only once, at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

“Ah, I see,” Tataw said, leaning back on a lobby sofa in the headquarters of the World Cup team from the republic of Cameroon, of which he has become captain at 26.

“But soccer must be more popular than ever in Cameroon,” the American said, “particularly considering the events of the past few days.”

“Because of our victories over Argentina and Romania, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Oh! There have been death cases!” Tataw said.

“There have been what?”

“Death cases! After our victories, back in Cameroon and in much of Africa there have been great feasts. Much to eat, much to drink. And eight or nine people so far, they have been killed! They drink too much celebrating the World Cup, and then they go into their automobiles and drive them, and then they, you know, smash them into trees and into other automobiles and such!”

“Terrible.”

“Yes, it is incredible! That is why Cameroon is sometimes called ‘the Brazil of Africa.’ ”

“Why?”

“Because sometimes we care too much. You know? As they do in Brazil after football. We care too much when we win, and we care too much when we are defeated.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Perhaps you are lucky, then, yes?” Tataw asked, nudging the American’s elbow again. “Lucky that your country does not care so much about who wins a game and who does not.”

“Oh,” the American said, “you should be in Detroit after a game sometime.”

“Is the same, yes?”

“Yes. Is the same.”

Children chase the bus. They clamor for autographs, chattering away in Italian at Africans who speak nothing but English and French. Police escorts attach flashing blue lights to the roofs of their cars. When an American asks a Cameroonian if he may tag along, he is told: “ Oui . Why not?”

Down a steep slope outside the Sierra Silvana Hotel, the bus of the Cameroon soccer team, belching back black diesel smoke, leaves the running children behind. They huff and puff and cough, then finally come to a stop, still waving. Through the bus windows, the Cameroonians wave back.

Dusk descends upon Selva di Fasano, nestled into the verdant hillsides near the Adriatic coast, in the heel of boot-shaped Italy. Billboard signs dot the road from Brindisi, advertising tickets to ride the ferry to Greece. Beyond the sea, one must curl up, up, up and around the pretzel contours of two thin lanes of traffic, risking becoming a “death case” amid Italian drivers who might not be drunk, but are by nature at least part Mario Andretti, part Leon Spinks.

Far from the everyday furor of Rome and Naples, farther from the soccer-related commotion on the Mediterranean isles of Sicily and Sardinia, this is where the World Cup’s most surprising and engaging team to date, the delegation from Cameroon, has been situated--35 miles from Bari, which was the setting of Monday night’s 4-0 loss to the Soviet Union.

If any Cup team has been adopted by the masses that have been following this global sporting event, that team, without question, is this team out of Africa.

From the opening day of the tournament--when the Indomitable Lions scored short-handed and held off defending champion Argentina with two men ejected by game’s end--to their next match, when Cameroon defeated Romania with two goals by a 38-year-old national hero who had just been coaxed out of retirement, this team has captured imaginations on several continents.

There is additional charm in the fact that Cameroon is being coached by a man from the Soviet Union who speaks neither English nor French, as well as in the fact that the aide who interprets for the coach is a chauffeur from Cameroon’s Soviet embassy, not to forget that the coach, 45-year-old Valery Nepomnyashchy--’Nepo,” to his players--found himself having to take sides Monday against mother Russia.

“It is a delicate situation,” Nepomnyashchy said. “I will tell you that I am a patriot, but while my heart is with the Soviet Union, my head is with Cameroon.”

As the words were being translated to the American seated opposite him, Nepo leaned over and said through the chauffeur:

“I think perhaps my heart, too, is already with Cameroon.”

In that respect, he is hardly alone.

For some, if one’s own nation cannot win the World Cup, there is hope that Cameroon can.

No African nation has won the Cup. This, in itself, is an incentive. “We came here with two motives,” said Tataw, who works as an administrator for Cameroon television when he is not playing soccer. “Number one was to well represent Cameroon and all of Africa. But secondly, and very importantly, was to--how shall I say?--to put up a good show for the world to see, to show that Africa must be better represented in World Cup from this day forward.”

It is a source of continued and considerable exasperation for African soccer officials that their large continent is awarded only two places among the 24 finalists in Cup competition. When the tournament comes to the United States in 1994, no less than three squads representing Africa should be present, it is strongly felt.

“There is no justice in this,” said Theophile Abega, one of Cameroon’s great soccer heroes, now retired. “Algeria, Nigeria, Morocco, Zaire . . . there must be at least six African nations whose teams are capable of winning the World Cup but were not permitted to compete. It is very unfair.”

Abega--nicknamed “The Doctor,” was one of the stars of Cameroon’s 1982 Cup-qualifying team, which was both successful and unlucky. In three first-round games, Cameroon was not defeated--but still did not advance to the next round. Since it had three draws, total number of goals scored turned out to be a determining factor. One of the teams Cameroon tied, Italy, went on to win the Cup.

Until Monday’s game, Cameroon had yet to be defeated in a World Cup game.

“You are surprised at how well Cameroon does in this tournament?” Abega asked.

The American seemed to be fielding questions faster than he could ask them.

“Perhaps I am much too ignorant of African soccer,” the American said, he hoped diplomatically.

“You should not be so surprised,” the Doctor said. “Perhaps Cameroon will win the World Cup. Is not impossible, you know.”

“I know.”

“Soccer is not such a big sport in your country, yes?”

“No. Yes,” the American said, using his pat answer.

“You will fill your stadium for World Cup four years from now?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

“Our stadium in Yaounde, it holds perhaps 50,000,” Abega said. “Before 1982 game with Morocco, we have maybe 200,000 inside stadium. We have another 500,000 outside stadium, with radios chattering.”

“How could so many attend?”

Abega leaned forward, tapping the American’s knee.

“In Africa, we have a saying,” he said. “ ‘If there is a seat for one, there is a seat for 10.’ ”

“Meaning you sit atop one another if necessary.”

“Meaning exactly that,” Abega said.

On an unlit field after dark, Cameroon’s players practice for an hour on a Saturday night. A fence surrounding the field is mobbed by Fasano children, who peer through the knotholes. At no other time in one’s childhood here, or perhaps even adulthood, would the “Mondiale” (World Cup) or one of its contending teams be close enough almost to touch.

On a tiny bench sits a large man, Professor Pierre Tsala Mbala, wearing a turquoise, dashiki-like pantsuit that he describes for the stranger seated beside him as a bou-bou . He is the Cameroon team doctor, as he was at the ’84 Olympics.

When asked what he remembered most of Los Angeles, the Professor thought it over, then said: “A big steak!” Then came a deep laugh.

He is equally cheerful when discussing the giant feasts being held back home in Cameroon, where he is employed as a university physiologist. Word has reached him by telephone of how much food and drink has been consumed, the beef, the chicken, the fishes and the “small animals from the bush.” He describes the sweet, white nectar taken from the bark of palm trees that goes down so smoothly after a great triumph on the field.

Everyone back home, the Professor says, has been watching, particularly since television came to Cameroon in 1985.

“If you have only one television among 20 neighbors, that means you will have 20 people in your house (for the match),” he said.

Cameroon has a population of 9.5 million. It derives its name from the Portuguese word cameroes , which means “shrimps.” When a Portuguese sailor, Fernando Po, came across a shrimp-filled river bend near Douala in 1472, he gave the territory its name.

Colonized by the Germans until the end of World War I, when the League of Nations divided control between the British and French, Cameroon finally achieved independence in 1961. Now, little by little, it is achieving an identity.

“As you know, there are many tribes in Africa, and no two are exactly alike,” Professor Tsala Mbala said. “But, if there is one chance to unite us, it is the football. On the day of a game, nobody works. In this spirit, we are together. And when we play, they do not say it is Cameroon playing. They say it is Africa.”

The American, listening, decided to save some time by saying: “Soccer is not so important in my country.”

“I know this,” the professor said, laughing. “I know this from Michel Kaham.”

“Who is Michel Kaham?”

“The assistant coach. Here he comes now.”

A lean man in soccer garb came toward the sideline.

“Kaham!” the Professor shouted. “Tell him what you know of American soccer.”

The American asked: “You know American soccer?”

“Oh, yes,” Kaham said. “I play not long ago. For Cleveland Force.”

Shortly before the World Cup began, the Indomitable Lions lost twice in the African Nations Cup, which did not sit well with 35-year-old goalkeeper Thomas Nkono, who already was not pleased about being benched.

Nkono laid the blame directly at the feet of the Soviet coach, who had been put in charge only within the past year. A great hero in the three 1982 World Cup draws, Nkono’s words carried weight, and he was blunt, decrying “totally inept preparation” and “amateurism at every level of the organization.” He threatened not to go to the World Cup if things did not change for the better.

“The house is on fire,” Nkono, said.

Weeks later, not only did Cameroon find itself the most talked-about team in the tournament, but six hours before the opening game, the coach had an apparent change of heart and benched one of the sport’s most talented goalkeepers, Joseph-Antoine Bell, in favor of Nkono. Nkono proceeded to shut out Argentina and its star, Diego Maradona.

Now, “Nepo” is being given credit for his work as coach.

“I cannot agree with this evaluation,” Nepomnyashchy said. “I think that I have not done a great deal. I have worked on the problems of discipline and organization, but that is all. We have made many mistakes, but luck has been on our side.”

Perhaps Nkono has changed his opinion, perhaps not. He declined to be interviewed.

If luck has been on Cameroon’s side, however, it has manifested itself at least partly in the presence of Roger Milla, who, at 38, is one of the oldest players in the Cup. Although he started neither game, Milla’s two goals against Romania were the cause of great celebration in Africa, where he is recognized and besieged publicly for autographs as much as any man on the continent.

Milla’s birth certificate and World Cup identification card reads “Miller,” thanks to a German registrar who misunderstood his parents’ pronunciation. He retired a few years ago, and whiled away some time recently playing on the isle of Reunion, located between Madagascar and Australia, among players with an average age of 22. He had no intention of competing on this level again.

“Then I was at this jubilee,” Milla said, “a ceremony and goodby game for the Doctor (Abega). And the population was asking for a comeback, first by him, then by me. The voices were growing and growing. Then the newspapers gave the feelings of the people, especially after we had lost in the African Cup.”

“A disgrace,” Kaham said. “The people knew something was missing.”

“So finally, I agreed to return and play,” Milla said.

His success greatly pleased the president of the republic, Paul Biya, who attended the opening game. Milla is in his fourth decade of playing professionally. He was African player of the year as far back as 1976. He is his nation’s Nolan Ryan, too old to be out there, too strong not to be.

“I am happy to make my people happy,” Milla said. “They ask us to keep on going until the end of our success, considering that there is an end to everything.”

The American cannot resist.

“When you play in America in 1994, you will be 42 years old,” he said.

Milla shook his head.

“You will not see me play in America,” he said.

Motioning to Milla and turning to Kaham, the American said: “Perhaps he could play for Cleveland.”

Now, Kaham shook his head.

“Does Cleveland still play?” he asked.