Excerpt from the chapter The Indomitable Lions
Cameroonians quickly found their groove, grew confident, and began playing like equals, with no fear, like a pride of lions, no longer like deer caught in the stadium floodlights, but now literally hunting down the Argentinians.
In the 31st minute, Jorge Burruchaga got a chance, trying to convert a pass from Maradona, but it did not go past N’Kono’s safe hands. At that point, some people started thinking Joseph Bell’s benching was a masterstroke, but it was already well known that it had nothing to do with his goalkeeping skills; his hubris had done him in instead, probably for the better as far as Cameroon was concerned. As the game progressed toward halftime, with no showering of goals by the Argentinians in sight, the crowd’s jeering of Argentina, especially Maradona, shifted to overwhelming support for Cameroon as they fought valiantly against a team with an intimidating football history and stars. Maradona had been instrumental in Napoli overcoming the home club AC Milan to clinch the Serie A title, and that augmented the spectators’ animosity toward anything associated with him. By the time the halftime whistle was blown, it was obvious that in forty-five minutes Cameroon had shed its doubts and begun playing like world beaters, while Argentina was reduced to defending its reputation against a physical onslaught it had never experienced.
The rough tactics Cameroon deployed to deny Argentina a victory at all costs eventually had to pay a price. Around the 60th minute, André Kana-Biyik tackled Claudio Caniggia from behind while he was heading toward the goalpost, and he was shown a red card for the foul. He had to leave the field immediately, leaving Cameroon with ten players. A collapse of Cameroon’s defense was expected, but the opposite happened.
In the 67th minute, as if taking revenge for his brother’s expulsion, Omam-Biyik scored a clumsy goal for Cameroon, and the stadium was stunned at first and then erupted like a volcano. Emmanuel Kundé took a free kick, and Cyrille Makanaky lobbed it high into the goalpost area, where Omam-Biyik headed it down toward the goal, almost straight at Argentina’s goalkeeper Nery Pumpido, a hero from the last World Cup, who had not had much to do until then while watching his teammates constantly test N’Kono at the other end. He fumbled, and the ball rolled into the net past the goal line. Cameroon’s players watched the sight in astonishment, and then one of them kicked it into the net again to make sure.
For a moment, Cameroon forgot about all its internal divisions and became a homogeneous country, and Africa felt like one nation.