BY the age of 11, Andre Onana had already made up his mind – school wasn’t for him and goalkeeping was.
His journey has been tough. But his spirit has always been strong.
Onana has needed all that mental strength at Manchester United amid a period of ups and downs.
His fortitude has been tested after his wife Melanie Kamayou was robbed of her £62,000 Hermes Birkin bag and a Rolex watch outside a Cheshire restaurant.
The robbery is the latest challenge for Onana.
It took the 29-year-old a while to settle into life at Old Trafford and he became a figure of ridicule due to several mistakes soon after he arrived in the summer of 2023.
Despite another tough season at United, Onana has looked more composed between the sticks and has an FA Cup medal to his name.
Success at Wembley feels a world away from being born in the tiny village of Nkol Ngok, 84 miles away from Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde.
As a boy, Andre would skip school to go watch his elder brother Christian play football.
His parents tried to force him to focus in class, but his brother, a goalkeeper whose influence would eventually rub off and shape his future, says it was impossible to stop him from coming along with him.
He told SunSport: “It’s so hard to stop Andre when he sets his sights on something.
“When he was five, I remember once he wanted to come with me to training, then I was playing for a second division team.
“So I tried to deceive him. I told him to get changed and, when he went in, I went to training. Can you believe he walked all the way by himself to the training park?
“I was shocked when I saw him, and I tell you, this is like a 30-minute walk from where our home is. He was just relentless for that age.”
If you’re born in a country like Cameroon, opportunities are limited.
You need a combination of sheer grit, determination, and an unshakable mental capacity to even stand a chance. Onana had all that when he joined his first football club ASVP.
Located in Yaounde, they would play barefooted and when the nail on his big toe was ripped off, he would tie a cloth round his toe and continue playing.
Onana shone out in matches against clubs from other parts of Cameroon and there were attempts to get him to move upfield, but he enjoyed being a goalkeeper, denying goals instead of trying to create them.
The first sign of the player who has graced European football came when Fundesport, a club owned by Cameroon and Barcelona legend Samuel Eto’o, organised a nationwide tournament to pick the best young players.
Christian explains: “This is where I started to see the future for him.
“Andre was picked from Yaounde and others from other parts of the country by Fundesport, who had connections. And of course, it was owned by Eto’o, and he is like a god to us, so there was belief that if you played in his team, you could go to Europe.”
Life has a way of connecting the dots. At Fundesport, Onana tasted just a small part of what professionalism was, they played in kits, he had gloves, and they would occasionally travel to Europe to play in tournaments.
It was at one of those invitational events that Barcelona’s La Masia academy spotted him, and signed him up straight away.
For years, La Masia had signed Cameroonian players as they desperately tried to discover the next Eto’o.
But try as they did, it just never happened, and Onana was the last Fundesport player to be signed by La Masia.
Samuel Aroko, his junior coach at ASVP, told SunSport: “I remember when he got to Barcelona, it was like a party for everyone at ASVP.
“We knew he was good, but we just never knew he would get to Spain as quickly as he did.
“It’s credit to him what he’s made of his career, you can’t get there if you give up easily.
“Historically, Cameroon has always had great goalkeepers, but the way he plays today is the same way he played back then, with his hands and feet and always looking to make a difference.”
La Masia came with its own challenges. In his mind, he’d gotten to the holy grail. He was finally in Europe, he was going to be earning big-money and the weather was cooler than the constant baking heat in Cameroon.
But all that would come crashing down when he found out that a Fifa ban on youth transfers meant he could not play for the club for 18 months.
When he returned, he played in a junior Champions League game for Barcelona against Ajax and it opened a new chapter.
His brother Christian said: “That is where Ajax saw him and said, ‘For the way we develop players, he is the main man’.”
At Ajax, there was a plan. He was made the first-choice goalkeeper for the second team, but every now and then, he would come onto the bench for the first team.
Their No1 Jasper Cillessen moved to Barcelona for £11.1m, but Ajax still felt Onana wasn’t ready for top-level football.
They signed Tim Krul from Newcastle on loan, but he arrived with an injury that would need at least three weeks to heal.
The former United goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar was working at Ajax and before handing Onana his debut said: “I believe in you. I know you’re young, but don’t be scared. You are talented, you’ve got a chance here, take it.”
As fate would have it, Onana’s first game ended in a 2-2 draw, his second game they won 2-1 and he saved a penalty, and his third game Ajax won again.
You don’t fix what isn’t broken, so he kept his spot and Krul had to move elsewhere.
But then another ban reared its head, threatening to destroy not only his career but his reputation at a time when he was a growing star in European football.
He was an international at 20, a Europa League finalist at 21, a Champions League semi-finalist at 23, leader of a brilliant young Ajax team on course for the title. But his career seemed on the edge of collapse at 24.
He had taken medication prescribed for his wife while feeling unwell and furosemide, a banned substance because it causes increased urine production and can be used to flush the system of other prohibited substances prior to doping, was found in his urine sample.
After his ban, Onana said: “I’m just a number. They can’t deal with it case by case. I think they should, but there are rules, and the rules are the rules.
“The doctors said [furosemide] is for water retention and doesn’t benefit you. They recognised it was a genuine mistake, but you’re responsible for everything in your body. If I buy a bottle of water that turns out to be contaminated, it’s my responsibility.”
The Court of Arbitration for Sport would find “no significant fault” and reduce his ban from 12 months to nine.
Christian revealed: “It was maybe the toughest I have ever seen him be.
“There was genuine fear in his eyes, and he would be on the phone with family all day, but to be honest, his agents Miguel and Albert Botines were incredibly supportive.
“They were more than psychologists, and they made sure Andre felt confident and counted down the time until he was back. They worked hard to take him to Inter Milan.”
At Inter, he was met with Samir Handanovic, the veteran goalkeeper and club captain, but instead of competing, Onana took the role of a junior brother. He’d go to Handanovic for tips and the Slovenian instantly took to him.
They shared the games until it became clear that the future was Onana. His presence in goal, his distribution, his footballing brain and his athleticism was on full show against Manchester City in the Champions League final.
It was a performance many consider as one of the best goalkeeping displays in the history of the competition.
That would end his one and only season at Inter before United made him the third most expensive goalkeeper in the world after agreeing a £47m deal.
Things have not been easy for Onana since moving to the Premier League, there has been match-winning saves but also high-profile howlers.
His future at United is said to be uncertain amid interest from Saudi Arabia.
But if he stays in Manchester beyond the summer, there is no doubt he has the mental strength needed to help the club battle the tough times and get United back at the right end of the table.
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