6 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Josué Balamandji and Colombe du Dja et Lobo agree another 1 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Jean Hugues Eyango was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Randy Ntume was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It needed Jean Hugues Eyango to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against PWD Bamenda, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
The dugout22 Feb 2027
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Franck Hongla chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
6 goals in 22 games at Fortuna Mfou — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at Colombe du Dja et Lobo updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Colombe du Dja et Lobo may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and Colombe du Dja et Lobo have had the benefit of it.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 37 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Colombe du Dja et Lobo is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
100 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
The dugout4 Jan 2027
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Franck Hongla to a room that had heard them before.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Frédéric Yenang is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Jean Hugues Eyango and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
6 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Colombe du Dja et Lobo will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
It is the least glamorous business a club does and the reason seasons do not collapse in February. Abubakar Isyaku is here for the weeks when three men are injured and somebody still has to play.