The 27-year-old Cameroonian goalkeeper, who will play his very first Champions League final with Inter on Saturday, has been able to recover from complicated situations at club and national level.
Since the start of his career as a goalkeeper, André Onana has never crossed paths with Erling Haaland, the Manchester City striker with 52 goals this season. On the occasion of the Champions League final between Cityzens and Inter Milan, Saturday June 10, this duel will be scrutinized as the last Lombard rampart has established itself as one of the best in the competition with Thibaut Courtois (Real Madrid) and Mike Maignan (AC Milan), eliminated in the previous round.
In 2021, Onana could however have faced Haaland in a match between Ajax Amsterdam and Borussia Dortmund in C1. But at the time, the Cameroonian was finishing serving his nine-month suspension for doping, after testing positive for furosemide, a drug prescribed to his girlfriend that he says he took by mistake. A case that had caused a lot of talk, like his ousting from the Cameroonian selection during the World Cup in December in Qatar.
Each time, the image of the goalkeeper took a hit, which did not prevent him from getting up to confirm the hopes placed in him, very young. During his training at FC Barcelona, the native of Nkol Ngok, Cameroon, is considered a talent in the making, because his qualities are those expected in modern goalkeepers. “He has a footwork as perfect as that of top-level outfield players“, describes Didier Banlock, former secretary general of Fecafoot, the Cameroonian Football Federation.
By signing for Ajax Amsterdam in 2015, at the age of 18, André Onana offered himself the opportunity to become number 1 in a club regularly present in the European Cup. In 2016-2017, the season in which he established himself as the holder of the Dutch club, he refused to participate in the African Cup of Nations, which Cameroon ultimately won. “He was in a crucial phase of his career. The choice was not easy but he decided to give up on the CAN“, recalls Boris Kapnang Yde, a very close friend of Onana.
An unfailing mind
This first episode scratches the goalkeeper’s relationship with the Cameroonian supporters, but allows Onana to continue his flight with Ajax, finally stopped dead by his suspension for doping. Nine months of forced stop between February and November 2021, without training with his club and his selection. “He was very affected, it was very hard for him to live“, recalls Bill Tchato, former coordinator of the Indomitable Lions and close to Onana.
“But then he put things into perspective and came back stronger. He took this suspension as a punishment and said to himself: ‘Wait for me, I’m coming. You will see what I will show you. Many other players would have dived, but he survived it“, assures Tchato. A foolproof mind, which serves him in major events, as before this Champions League final against City.
“I remember a conversation we had three hours before the Champions League semi-final second leg between Inter and AC Milan. I had the impression that he was not going to play a game he was so joking. It’s very surprising for a top player, but he knows how to make sense of things“, describes his friend Kapnang Yde, who assured at the beginning of the week that Onana was “not stressed” at the idea of playing this final against the Cityzens.
The fourth Cameroonian to win the Champions League?
After his return from suspension, Onana therefore returned to his best level and signed for Inter Milan in the summer of 2022. The adaptation was quick, but this new stage was this time marked by his exclusion from the Cameroonian selection for the 2022 World Cup. The reasons which led coach Rigobert Song and Fecafoot, led by Samuel Eto’o – a close friend of Onana – to exclude the goalkeeper, differ from one interlocutor to another.
His relatives do not want to talk about it and also assure that Onana himself avoids the subject. “He suffered a lot from what was said on social media when he left Doha.”, testifies Kapnang Yde. Onana announces his international retirement a few days after the end of the World Cup, but the trend is currently for a return to selection. “André is in love with his country and he will not be able to resist a summons“, thinks his friend.
His career in the Champions League with Inter puts him back in the spotlight for the Cameroonian public, annoyed by the episode in Qatar. “The problem with Cameroonian supporters is that they put you upstairs very quickly, then downstairs immediately after.“, maintains Tchato.
At the moment, Onana is at the very top. He could become the fourth Cameroonian in history to postpone the Champions League, after Geremi with Real Madrid (2000, 2002), Samuel Eto’o with FC Barcelona and Inter (2006, 2009, 2010) and Joël Matip with Liverpool (2019). But for that, André Onana, goalkeeper who has made the most saves in C1 since the start of the competition, will have to stop the City machine and its main threat Haaland.