Abstract
Football has received scholarly attention recently in Africa, and in Cameroon particularly. Scholars have researched and written about football in Cameroon from multifarious perspectives. Some have written about the introduction of football to the country (Tanga, 1969; Darby 2012). Others have written about Operation Coup du Coeur, a voluntary financial donation made by Cameroonians to support the national team at the 1994 World Cup in the United States of America (Nkwi and Vidacs, 1997). There are others who have focused on ethnicity poli- tics, and identity (Nkwi and Vidacs, 1997; Vidacs, 2004a). Pannenborg (2008: 198) applied an anthropological perspective and concludes that in Cameroon:
it is evident that football is closely linked to both economics and politics. At both local and national levels, ethnocentrism is working full force: football is an arena in which the country’s different ethnic groups are struggling to gain power and dominance in a relatively non-violent manner.
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© 2014 Walter Gam Nkwi
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Nkwi, W.G. (2014). Shifting Identity and Cameroon’s National Football Squad: Indomitable Lions to Tamed Lambs. In: Onwumechili, C., Akindes, G. (eds) Identity and Nation in African Football. Global Culture and Sport . Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137355812_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137355812_10
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