The demise of eight football fans in a stampede at Olembe Stadium on Monday has left another dark blot on the beautiful game and the Afcon tournament currently on in Cameroon.
With proper security measures in place the tragedy could have been avoided, that's what we many football think. Maybe not.
But one thing that's clear is that the tournament in Cameroon is proving to be among the best in the recent times despite the challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic. The smaller nations in the tournament have come to the party in a big way so much it is expected that one of them will reach the semifinals. That will come as a big boost to the African game after heroics by minnows such as Comoros and Malawi for instance before they fell in the last-16 round.
The tragedy at Olembe nothwithstanding, I feel football-loving Africans need a football anecdote of global proportions to comfort their hearts.
Though the main stadium for the Afcon tournament is widely known as Olembe, it is in fact officially named Stade Omnisport Paul Biya, after the Cameroon eternal president. Biya, turning 89 next month, has been in power for 39 years.
The construction of the 60,000-capacity stadium began in 2018 and was officially opened on 3 September 2021. It is located in Olembe, a Yaounde neighbourhood 13km north of the city centre of the Cameroon capital.
The stadium, however, is not the first one named after a personality and only to be better known by the name of its location in a major city.
In Italy, the San Siro Stadium in Milan is officially known as Stadio Giuseppe Meazza since 1980, a year after the demise of the city's most favourite footballer ever. Meazza, who was born on 23 August 1910 and died on 21 August 1979, was the most decorated player to emerge from Milan. He played the best years of his career for Inter-Milan, for 14 years, before moving to AC Milan and later Juventus.
He could have begun his career with AC, the club he admired as a child, but rejected him because of his small frame. Meazza was 14 but significantly smaller than his peers because of poorer nutrition he was exposed to. His mother struggled to keep the home fires burning after Meazza's dad died in World War 1 when he was seven years old.
It's formidable history that Inter-Milan took him as he was and gave him his senior debut at just 17, going on to score 242 goals in 365 games for the club. He won three Serie A titles with Inter, and two World Cup titles with Italy in 1934 and 1938.
Despite his rich football history, and the pride his home city has in him, the stadium named after him is more famously known in Milan, Italy and the rest of the world as the San Siro.
Similar to Olembe in Yaounde, San Siro is the name of a locality in Milan - about 4km west of the city centre.
What's begging the question is that, couldn't Cameroon find a uniting football legend to name its premier football stadium after? The country is spoilt for choice - from the likes of Theophile Abega (may his soul rest in peace) and François Omam-Biyik in ages gone by to Rigobert Song and Samuel Eto'o in later years - Cameroonians cite Roger Milla as their biggest legend of all time.
Milla played in three World Cup editions, the first in 1982 Spain. He was already in retirement since 1988 when President Biya called and asked the 38-year-old to be part of the Indomitable Lions squad for 1990 Italy. Milla set the tournament on fire with four memorable goals and celebrations the world is talking about to this day.
In 1994 in the US, he scored against Russia to set a new record as the oldest goalscorer ever in the World Cup - at the age 42!
If there was any personality to be given the honour of Olembe stadium, that one person should have been Roger Milla. And even better, he is the son of Yaounde by birth.
What a lost opportunity.
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