They had to adjust. It wasn't something they were talking about. It was something that happened on the field, and I would say I was quite alone in knowing that it was something like that. You could even say we lost against England because of that.

Welcome to It Was What It Was with me, Rob Draper and here with Jonathan Wilson,

and we are discussing one of the great World Cup campaigns of all time,

certainly one of the iconic African World Cup campaigns.

And on Tuesday, Jonathan, you did a great job of setting this up for Camaroos 1990 World Cup.

And there was a fair degree, I think, we could say, of chaos in the run-up to this.

We talked about a stereotype in our African nations, but in this sense, it is true that the preparations were far from an ideal.

But we have a side that's about to play the opening game in the World Cup

against the Great World Champions with Diego Mora Donner

in the side of the world's greatest player.

But that was Joseph Antoine Bell, the goalkeeper who's been left out of the squad

talking about their eventual defeat to England in the quarter finals

and how he's kind of saying that if the coach had picked me

from the start would have been in the finals, isn't he? And we'll get on to that later in the episode

and as to how well Cameroon did and whether they might have beaten England. They certainly

paid very well that day. But yeah, you left us on this kind of cliffhanger. They're about to take on

Argentina in the opening game of the World Cup finals

against the greatest player of all time, J.G. Maradonna.

They've had a massive sort of crisis in a run-up to preparation.

They're losing all their friendly games.

And now their keeper's been dropped because he's done a dodgy interview.

Joseph Antoine

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