Late start in Cameroon colours for Assou-Ekotto

Written by The Standard Tribune

Thursday, 20 May 2010 13:14

Despite his age, Benoit Assou-Ekotto is a relative newcomer to national team football, having debuted for Cameroon in March last year and collected just five more caps since.

Benoit-Assou-Ekotto The 26-year-old left back has had a good season in England's Premier League and is set to earn more caps for his country at the World Cup.

Assou-Ekotto played regularly for his club Tottenham Hotspur this season as they finished fourth to qualify for the UEFA Champions League.

He was an English League Cup finalist in February and was also in the Cameroon team when they made sure of 2010 World Cup qualification late last year.

Injury, however, kept him out of the Nations Cup finals in Angola in January.

French-born Assou-Ekotto initially seemed reluctant to play for Cameroon, rebuffing several overtures from officials, as his burgeoning reputation at Racing Lens suggested he might have a future in the blue colours of France.

This has since been denied by the player in interviews, but he remains a latecomer to the international game, winning his first cap last year in a friendly against Guinea and then becoming a regular in the key qualifiers at the end of the World Cup preliminaries.

Assou-Ekotto, whose elder brother Mathieu played professionally in Belgium and the Netherlands, began as a junior at Lens aged 10 and debuted in the first team just ahead of his 20th birthday.

He recently shocked the sensibilities of the game's romantics with a frank admission in an English newspaper interview that he had left France for Spurs to earn more money.

"A career is only 10, 15 years. It's only a job. Yes, it's a good, good job and I don't say that I hate football, but it's not my passion," he told the Guardian.