Etapas del manual de procedimientos

As we know already, the grand match is a way for the coach to select his players for the next match. To return to matters of corruption, we now know that the coach does not only look at the football skills of the players. First, the coach can be put under pressure by a player’s godfather to put him in the squad. Second, as it is generally understood that all the players want to play the match, there is a specific form of corruption between the coach and the players in the team.

It is here that we discover the issue of the coach’s player or, put differently, the son of the coach. These players are the coach’s favourites, sometimes be- cause they are from the same ethnic group or area but mostly because they give the coach money on a regular basis. Such a player will automatically be selected for an official match. The player, who then collects the match bonus, has to give

half of it to the coach as part of the deal. For both player and coach this is a win- win situation because if the coach does not select the player, the latter cannot receive any money at all and the coach cannot collect half of something that is not there.

There will always be a few players who pay the coach money in order to play. Usually these players are fairly young and inexperienced. The reasoning is that an experienced player will have more chance of getting selected for the match because of his football qualities. Unlike the older and experienced player, the younger player still has to prove himself. He can either decide to wait and see whether the coach will select him or he can speed up the process by offering money. However, corrupting the coach does not necessarily involve money. Sometimes the player offers the coach a girl or something else. ‘You can give the coach a bottle of wine to keep him happy and make him think about you,’ Joseph says.

To me it was strange that everybody seemed to be aware of who the coach’s players were and who were not. ‘Is it not a secret?’ I ask Joseph. ‘Why? There is nothing hidden!’ he replies. ‘Sometimes you will see the coach selecting a player who is inferior to the one on the bench. Sometimes you see the coach giving taxi money to a few players, while the training allowances are not there.’

The spiritual adviser confirms this explanation. ‘There is no secret under the sun. The only secret is in the grave where people have stopped talking and listen- ing. Most of these players are not doing this because they want to. Nobody wants to see other players take FCFA 20,000 for themselves while he has to give the coach FCFA 10,000. So he has to discuss his grievances with at least one person. And this person too has his own person with whom he shares his secrets. That’s how the secret comes out. That’s how people know things.’

When the coach accepts money from players, he puts himself in an awkward situation. On the one hand, he wants to have as much money as possible. There- fore he will try to get money from many players by promising to select them for the match. However, if the coach accepts money from too many players, it means that the team will consist of too many average players. The coach then puts in jeopardy his primary goal, namely winning the match. Thus the dilemma is to make sure that he collects enough money and at the same time makes the team strong enough to be sure of victory.

The coach can solve the problem by adding these players to the squad but leaving most of them on the bench during the match. In this case, the players receive the match bonus and the coach gets his share, while the other objective – winning the match – is also accomplished. ‘The coach can just keep the player on the reserves’ bench,’ Joseph says. ‘He knows that this match is more than the

player’s capacity. So he cannot play because the coach will not want to lose the match. That’s why not all the players who give money to coaches can play.’

Joseph continues by saying that the coach can also solve the problem by creating a team with a majority of good players and a few average players. ‘The coach knows that he has eight good players on the field. This means that in the team there are eight players who can give him the victory and three of them are just average.’ So the coach will probably not put the worst players on the field because the risk of losing is too great. A certain mechanism thus ensures that this kind of corruption does not get out of hand.

When the ninety minutes are over, everybody leaves the field – the players to take a shower, the coaches to discuss tactics and the supporters to get a drink in one of the many bars around the stadium. Essomba and I walk down the road to his compound. As usual, many people on the side of the road are calling out his name and those of other players as they pass by. It is not easy to prevent him from stopping every other second because his eyes are more focused on girls than anything else. He first makes a date with a girl in a hair saloon who, as he claims, calls him after every training session. A few hundred metres further, Essomba is talking to another girl, who appears to have been his reason for going home early yesterday evening.

When we reach his compound, he tells me that there will be another training session tomorrow morning at seven o’clock. This gives me the opportunity to go and visit the spiritual adviser in Limbe on Friday afternoon. I make an appoint- ment with him via a mobile phone in one of the phone booths. Like Internet cafés, these have grown to extraordinary numbers over the last few years.