3, December 2022
Mbappe and Lewandowski face off as France take on Poland at World Cup 0
There is arguably no more thrilling player at this World Cup than Kylian Mbappe, who leads France into their last-16 clash on Sunday with a Poland side whose own hopes of pulling off a famous upset will depend to a large extent on Robert Lewandowski.
It is a sobering thought that Mbappe, not 24 until later this month, may not yet be at the peak of his powers but he has already scored seven goals in 10 appearances at the World Cup.
That tally includes one in the 2018 final when he was still a teenager as France beat Croatia in Moscow.
His mission now is to help his country become the first to retain the World Cup since Brazil, with an even younger Pele, did so in 1962.
Mbappe has already scored three times in Qatar, including a brace in a 2-1 victory against Denmark that secured qualification for the last 16, and there is a belief he is thriving as the undisputed star of Didier Deschamps’ side.
The situation is different to that of Paris Saint-Germain, where he shares the limelight with Lionel Messi and Neymar, and in that sense it may be that Karim Benzema’s withdrawal due to injury on the eve of the tournament does no harm to French hopes.
“Kylian has no ego,” insisted Deschamps a few days ago, going against the perception of Mbappe in the context of PSG.
“He is a decisive player for us and his performances put him in the spotlight. He is not 18 anymore. He has experience now.”
It wasn’t just Mbappe -– who now has as many international goals as Zinedine Zidane — that France missed as a second-string team lost 1-0 to Tunisia on Wednesday, a result that did not stop them topping their group.
He will be back along with the likes of Hugo Lloris, Antoine Griezmann and Olivier Giroud as France and Poland meet at a major tournament for the first time since the 1982 World Cup.
‘Beyond reproach’
“Kylian is not the same player or person as in 2018,” said Griezmann on Friday when asked about Mbappe’s role in a squad hit by injuries to several key players before the tournament.
“He is much more a part of the squad now. He speaks a lot and has fun. He knows that the media, fans and even his teammates will be watching everything that he does but he is beyond reproach.”
France are clear favourites for Sunday’s game but there is the memory of what happened in the last 16 at last year’s European Championship, when Mbappe missed the crucial penalty in a shoot-out defeat to Switzerland.
Poland only just scraped through their group ahead of Mexico on goal difference and Lewandowski’s strike -– his first World Cup goal –- in the win over Saudi Arabia was therefore crucial.
“I’m aware it might be my last World Cup and I wanted to be able to say that I’ve played and scored at World Cups,” he said after that game.
The 34-year-old also got nine goals in qualifying and there is nobody else quite on his level in Czeslaw Michniewicz’s squad.
“We are happy because getting out of the group was our objective,” said defender Jakub Kiwior after the team trained on Friday.
Seeing Mbappe and Lewandowski together on the same pitch is a rare treat.
Two of the most prolific forwards in the modern game, they are nevertheless different types of striker –- one all about explosive pace coming into the box from wide areas, and the other the ultimate penalty-box finisher now coming towards the end of his career.
Lewandowski left Bayern Munich for Barcelona in the last close season, but according to reports in France he might have ended up at PSG.
Le Parisien reported on Friday that PSG tried to convince Lewandowski to join them after tying Mbappe to a new contract in May.
PSG’s failure to sign Lewandowski or another top-class number nine was given as one reason why Mbappe was reportedly so unhappy at his club just a couple of months ago.
Those reports have since died down and his focus is on the World Cup, with Lewandowski now standing in his way.
Source: AFP
4, December 2022
All what Biya the Monarch wanted was a party in Paris befitting his rule 0
Paul Biya is the longest serving president on the African continent, longer than even Yoweri Museveni. He came to power in 1982, when the founding president of that unlucky country, Ahmadou Ahidjo, stepped down after he had presided over his country’s decline since 1960.
There was some drama in that changing of the guard. Ahidjo was not particularly popular with the French, and Biya, his prime minister, looked like he could be more useful. So they cooked up a conspiracy involving telling the president he had a terminal cancer and his days were numbered, and maybe it was proper for him to go to France and live his last days in good care and great comfort.
But once in France, Ahidjo sought a second opinion and discovered that his “cancer” had been a hoax hatched to get rid of him and install Biya in his place. So, he came back home and, simply, demanded that Biya give him his job back. All hell broke loose, Biya saying he was there to stay and Ahidjo mobilising his supporters to fight for him in a brief civil war that killed a few people. Biya managed to keep Ahidjo at bay, and when his former master mounted an unsuccessful putsch, had him arrested, tried and sentenced to death, a sentence which was later commuted to life in prison.
Ruled single-handedly
Since then, Biya has ruled the country single-handedly, and as his age advanced, he got into the habit of staying out of Cameroon, returning only a few times a year to visit and meet and know his ministers.
Over this period, he has not exactly endeared himself to his people, who have coined very nasty sobriquets for him, including “Sphinx,” or “Dinosaur” or even “Mummy.”
So, why did the “Mummy” think that he could go to Paris for the celebration of his 40 years in power? Well, most probably because he thought his country was too backward to provide the kind of décor for such an auspicious occasion. Having lived so much in Europe he possibly did not know a venue in his country that could do the appropriate catering for the feast.
But when he got to the venue of the event in France, he found irate Cameroonians waiting for him, with clubs, knives and crossbars, chanting expletives and punching and kicking members of Biya’s entourage. Among the chants I could catch from the riot were things like, “Celebrating 40 years of what? Murder, looting? Crap!”
While the president was lucky enough to have himself whisked away, there was a fatality in his delegation, reportedly a minister.
To me – and, I daresay, many others, it was clear this old man, who despite his age – he is almost 90— spots jet-black hair, only betrayed by his rickety walk and over-powdered face, tell-tale signs even the vainest of our despots cannot hide – was unaware of his surroundings.
Sycophantic hangers-on
As with most African rulers who have overstayed their welcome, Paul Biya surrounds himself with sycophantic hangers-on who travel with him and keep telling him the things he desperately needs to hear to keep him under the false belief he is still in charge of his country.
Now, in his absence, it is like when the cat is away the mice will play. Well before the fiasco of the president’s anniversary party, in June, his minister back in Cameroon was summoned before a court of law to answer charges of corruption, involving huge defence contracts granted to companies owned by his wife!
So, the former minister appears in court in his dapper, double-breasted suit and looks extremely well-groomed, which is okay for a former minister, I suppose. But to complete the picture of a former minister in touch with the times, the gentleman arrives in court sipping on a coupe of champagne, just to underline what the whole thing was about.
I loved the optics, the spectre of a small Biya doing his thing at home while the big boss is strutting his stuff abroad. It is a case of emulating the leader. In fact, looking at the cheek that this young man was displaying, I had this feeling that he was going to evoke Biya in his defence by saying, “I am only doing what my president is doing, nothing more, nothing less. But it is a sad sign of the times in a country that has a lot of colour.
The story of Cameroon is much more colourful than an overaged president running a bankrupt country. It is about a people that has been traumatised by extreme poverty, growing threats of terror attacks by Islamist groups afflicting the whole sub region and an absentee government by its president who comes to visit from time to time.
A brief historical study shows us that the man Biya is supposed to have conned into early retirement, Ahidjo, was not even the legitimate freedom fighter who had fought to drive the French out of Cameroon. That role was played by Felix-Roland Moumie, who was assassinated by French intelligence agents in Switzerland in 1960, aged 35. His fault was that he was too much like Patrice-Emery Lumumba of Congo, who was also killed for the same reasons: too anti-west, most likely a communist.
Such is Africa for you.
Culled from The East African