Song’e Cameroon. The transformation of the former defender into coach

Rigobert Song appeared, for the less accustomed to French football – the vast majority at the time – on June 17, 1998 under a cascade of pigtails. He was the central defender of Cameroon who lost 3-0 against Italy led by Cesare Malidini (Luigi Di Biagio and Christian Vieri scored twice) in the group stage of the French World Cup. It was his second experience in the World Cup, but the one four years earlier in America was still far from being an invasive media event in our country (also due to very few Italian schedules). He was one of those physically dominant defenders, although one meter eighty-three in height for a good seventy kilos they did not differ much from the average of European defenders. He was good, above all nice for his hair and smile. He played three games and went home immediately, despite Cameroon being a very good team, who were doing well and spectacularly on the pitch. Three games, few mistakes, the feeling that he could deserve much more than Ligue 1.

It was bought by Salernitana, convinced they had made a bargain. He lasted four games and five months: Delio Rossi considered him unsuitable for Italian football. He moved on to a Liverpool looking for a dimension in the Premier League other than that of a supporting player. He didn’t last long there too. A year and a half, thirty-three games, the rejection of Gérard Houllier: “He has class, but he must learn that football is a team game where the team must have first place over any other personal ambition,” he said at the end of the first season to the Reds. He increased the dose the following January: “Football is a game of rules in which anarchy is not allowed. Freedom yes, but not the freedom to do what you want. We need order, on the pitch and within ourselves.” For the French coach Song did not own it. He was kicked out, but with regret: “I haven’t seen many players with Rigobert’s characteristics, I’m very sorry he didn’t want to put them at everyone’s service.”

Song was strong, very strong in advances, good at marking and recoveries. Little accustomed, however, to giving up his instinct, which several times led him astray, to commit trivial mistakes, due to lack of discipline. He toured several teams, different countries (England, Germany, France, Turkey), was loved everywhere and in the long run kicked out. The reason is always the same: always wanting to do one’s own thing. It’s never a forward-looking choice on the pitch.

When Chad announced in 2015 that they had signed him as coach, L’Equipe asked Gérard Houllier what he thought of the African federation’s decision. He replied: “My hope is that he has learned that the team is something more than an addition of individuals, that what is really important is trusting others, overcoming selfishness”. Rigobert Song, still at the Equipe, but a few years later, agreed with his former coach. “For years I thought it was the great players who made teams win, now I understand that it is not so, that one man alone can do nothing against a group. It is clear to me that rules are not a constraint, they are the backbone of our freedom”. He said it after a stroke had hit him, had pushed him to the brink of death. After recovering, Song turned into all those coaches who had lectured him for what he did, or rather he didn’t do on the pitch. His Cameroon, the one he managed to bring to the World Cup in Qatar, and who today at 11 will face Switzerland in the first match of group G, is the nemesis of the player he was, the sum of everything he tried to ignore when he was on the field. “This team must be like a corps de ballet, everyone has a role to play, no one can do without the others. When I think I try to instill this in my kids it makes me laugh. For part of my career, I thought this was bullshit. Then life enters the tackle and luckily you manage to restore order out of disorder”.