Marked for Gislain Abianda
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market18 Jan 2027
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Fauve Azur Elite waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Fortuna Mfou is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Player ratings18 Jan 2027
Successful dribbles: 28. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market18 Jan 2027
The offer from Aigle Royal de Moungo for Gislain Abianda was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
The dugout18 Jan 2027
news_b_frozen_out_of_the_side
Squad18 Jan 2027
Victor Ehibe and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Transfer targets18 Jan 2027
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Canon Yaounde have kept their man, and Fortuna Mfou go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Match16 Jan 2027
A 1‑0 win over Aigle Royal de la Menoua, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
Player ratings18 Jan 2027
Marked 8.00. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Fortuna Mfou.
Squad18 Jan 2027
The medical room confirms 21 days on the sidelines for Sidoine Koularambai, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
In brief
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The dugout
The manager’s verdict
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Squad
Words at Fortuna Mfou training over how hard people work
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The dugout
The manager makes an example of Sidoine Koularambai
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
The dugout11 Jan 2027
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Fortuna Mfou have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Market11 Jan 2027
The offer from Panthere du Nde for Marc Tsala Ndi was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Victor Ehibe in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fortuna Mfou this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad11 Jan 2027
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Marc Lafleur Essono and Fortuna Mfou agree another 3 years.
Market11 Jan 2027
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Fortuna Mfou have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Player ratings11 Jan 2027
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.32, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Trésor Mbengue was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad11 Jan 2027
9 goals and a season average of 7.23. Form like that gets noticed well beyond this town.
The dugout11 Jan 2027
“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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 44. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
A brace, and Marius Obekop takes the afternoon — 8.41
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Marius Obekop provided it, and the 8.41 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Match3 Oct 2026
Fortuna Mfou are shipping goals every week
Two or more conceded in each of the last 5 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Marc Tsala Ndi is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Victor Ehibe 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.
Match3 Oct 2026
2‑3 to Stade Renard de Melong, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad5 Oct 2026
100 games in the shirt. Nobody sets out to build a record like that; it happens to a certain kind of player at a certain kind of club, and this town knows what it has.
Squad5 Oct 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Gislain Abianda commits to Fortuna Mfou for another 3 years.
The dugout5 Oct 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 2‑3 Andre Mbia left the room before anybody could ask which.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.50, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Deadline passes with 24 signed and 0 gone
That is the business done at Fortuna Mfou until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Market7 Sep 2026
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Gislain Abianda reports back to Fortuna Mfou with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Marc Tsala Ndi is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Victor Ehibe 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.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
1 academy graduates step up at Fortuna Mfou
Senior shirt numbers handed to boys the coaches have known since they were twelve. Most will not make it and all of them have already done the hard part.
Market7 Sep 2026
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Nicolas Etame is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. Fortuna Mfou will try again when the window opens; Unisport Bafang may not be selling by then.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad31 Aug 2026
Sudais Ali Baba damages knee ligaments — 18 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 18 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Market31 Aug 2026
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Panthere du Nde waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Fortuna Mfou is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Transfer targets31 Aug 2026
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Fortuna Mfou have done the hard part with Cotonsport Garoua, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Squad31 Aug 2026
The step up is real for Ari Tiente
At 20 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Victor Ehibe and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Transfer targets31 Aug 2026
$14.0K on the table at Aigle Royal de Moungo. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Trésor Mbengue falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Market31 Aug 2026
A season-long look at somebody else’s player: Stéphane Bekolo arrives from Canon Yaounde with something to prove and a return ticket in the drawer. Good loans make everybody richer; this one starts Saturday.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad24 Aug 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Sudais Ali Baba
25 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Fortuna Mfou lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market24 Aug 2026
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Fortuna Mfou, and it is not being withdrawn.
Market24 Aug 2026
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Fortuna Mfou they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Victor Ehibe in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Fortuna Mfou this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Transfer targets24 Aug 2026
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Canon Yaounde have kept their man, and Fortuna Mfou go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Market24 Aug 2026
The name of Marc Tsala Ndi has come up in conversations Fortuna Mfou were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market3 Aug 2026
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Aliou Souleyman Hendji and Fortuna Mfou agree another 4 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Aliou Souleyman Hendji 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.
Transfer targets3 Aug 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Aminou Bouba has outgrown this division
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Fortuna Mfou know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
Market3 Aug 2026
49 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.