He was
named to the FIFA 100, a list of the 125 greatest living
footballers selected by Pelé
Biography
Roger Milla (born Albert Roger Miller, May 20, 1952, Yaoundé) is
a former Cameroonian football player. He is one of the first
African players to be a major star on the international stage.
Amazingly, he did not achieve international stardom until he was
38, an age at which most other footballers have long since
retired.
Born in the Cameroonian capital of Yaoundé, he moved constantly
as a child because of his father's railroad job. He signed for
his first club in Douala as a 13-year-old. At 18, he won his
first league championship with another Douala club; in 1976, by
which time he had moved to Tonnerre Yaoundé, he was awarded the
African Golden Ball.
In 1977, he was lured to Europe by the French club Valenciennes.
However, he was kept on the reserves for two years. In 1979, he
joined AS Monaco, but shuttled between the reserves' bench and
the injury list. The next year, he joined Bastia, but still did
not flourish. He finally found stardom at Saint-Etienne in 1984;
he then starred for Montpellier from 1986 to 1989, and became a
member of the club's coaching staff after retiring from French
football.
While playing in France, he made his first appearance for the
Cameroon national team (in 1978). He was a member of Cameroon's
team at the 1982 World Cup, having a good goal wrongly
disallowed against Peru in their first match. He played well as
Cameroon went out with three draws from their three first-round
games. Two years later, he was part of the squad competing at
the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California. He first
retired from international football in 1987, and eventually
moved to Réunion in the Indian Ocean for his retirement.
However, in 1990, he received a phone call from the President of
Cameroon, who pleaded with him to come out of retirement and
rejoin the national team. He agreed, and went to Italy with the
Indomitable Lions for the World Cup.
Milla emerged as one of the tournament's major stars. He scored
four goals in Italy, celebrating each one with a dance around
the corner post that has become a popular goal celebration ever
since. Two of his goals came against Romania in Cameroon's
second game, and two more came in extra time against Colombia in
the last 16 to carry Cameroon to the quarter-finals -- the
furthest that an African team has ever advanced at the World Cup
(Senegal matched this feat in 2002).
Milla returned to the 1994 World Cup at the age of 42 (during
the tournament, a member of the Cameroon delegation remarked to
journalists that Milla was in fact aged 46!). In the USA,
Cameroon was knocked out in the group stages; however, Milla
scored the consolation prize of a goal against Russia, breaking
his own record as the oldest goalscorer in a World Cup
tournament.
He is now an itinerant ambassador for African causes. In 2004,
he was named to the FIFA 100, a list of the 125 greatest living
footballers selected by Pelé in conjunction with FIFA's
centenary celebrations.
