Black History Month Players: Marc-Vivien Foé

 As October is Black History Month in the UK, I will spend this month publishing threads on X (formerly Twitter) on certain players who have been part of a long and distinguished line of Black representation at West Ham United. With this being the second year I have undertaken this exercise, I thought it would be fair to publish a blog post for those who don't have X or find threads on the platform difficult to read. Feel free to read last year's threads, via this link. But today's post and thread, which falls on the 23rd day of this month is on a player who will eternally be linked with the number 23 in the late Marc-Vivien Foé. 

Born in Nkolo, a small village about 11 miles south of Yaoundé, the capital city of Cameroon in May 1975, Foé grew up with no aspirations of wanting to become a footballer. He instead wanted to be a pilot, but played football for his school, despite his parents protests.

 It was at school where Foé was first scouted by a professional coach, who just so happened to be Jean-Pierre Sadi, the coach of Cameroon’s under-15 team at the time. Sadi took Foé under his wing & would help him get a footballing career started after finishing school at 16.

Foé would start his career at 16 with a junior team by the name of Union De Garoua, spending one year before moving to Fogape Yaounde, another junior team with links to one of Cameroon’s biggest domestic teams, Canon Yaounde, which is where Foé moved in 1993.  

1993 was a big year for Foé as he won the Cameroonian cup, was part of Cameroon under 20 that finished 3rd in that years under 20s World Cup & would make his full international debut for Cameroon in the September. What’s more remarkable is that Foé did all of this by just 18.

Foé had quickly become the hottest talent in Cameroon & at 19, he would play at his first World Cup, representing Cameroon in all three World Cup group games that summer as Cameroon were knocked out early. But Foé was a bright spot & European teams were noticing his talent. With French team Auxerre, who at the time were one of the biggest clubs in France, offering Foé a trainee position, he would reject it as fellow French club, RC Lens, would offer him a full contract instead.

Whilst only making 86 appearances & scoring 11 goals in 4 and a half years with Lens, Foé became a regular fixture in the side, even helping Lens secure the French league title in 1998. His talent was undeniable & Europe’s elite clubs were rumoured to have been watching him, with Manchester United rumoured to have been close to signing him ahead of the 1998/99 season, meaning Foé would have been part of the famous squad that won the treble in 1999. 

Due to play at the 1998 World Cup and most likely move to an elite European club that summer, Foé would cruelly be denied the opportunity to do both due to a broken leg. But as he had time to heal, Foé, a gentle and considerate man in all descriptions of him, thought of how others struggled with certain things & used this time to try & improve others’ lives. Whilst his broken leg was healing, Foé travelled to Burkina Faso with fellow African footballing legends George Weah & Abedi Pele to support the ‘kick polio out of Africa campaign”. This was just the beginning of his charity work that he’s fondly remembered for.

Once his broken leg had healed, Foé would make his long-expected move away from Lens as he joined West Ham for a club record fee of £4.2m in January 1999, signing on the same day as fellow club icon Paolo Di Canio.

Foé is still loved by West Ham fans and by those who worked for the club for his service. His generosity to help others is remembered fondly by former Hammers physio John Green, who recalls an event where Foé spent 20,000 pounds of his own money on crutches to ensure that people in Cameroon got much needed medical supplies. 

Foé would return to France in 2000, playing for Lyon, where he would miss the majority of the 2000/01 season due to suffering from Malaria, but would help Lyon win the Ligue 1 title in 2002 when he had recovered & would make the Cameroon team for the 2002 World Cup.

During this time, Foé, who was in his mid-20s & in the prime of his career, served as the backbone of a Cameroon team, alongside another former Hammer in Rigobert Song and legendary striker Samuel Eto’o, that won two consecutive African Cup Of Nations tournaments in 2000 & 2002. An interesting fact about that first 2000 win was that it was the first time a West Ham player had won a major international trophy since 1966.

Foé would return to English football with Manchester City in 2002 on a season long loan. He would wear the number 23 in a season where he scored 9 goals for the club, including the last ever goal at City’s old stadium of Maine Road. But after such a great season, tragedy stuck as when representing Cameroon at the 2003 confederations cup tournament, Foé would collapse in the semi-final & would sadly die on the pitch from a heart attack. He was only 28. 

The outpouring of grief from the world of football was immense, but a fitting tribute to a man whose generosity knew no bounds. Many of his former clubs retired his club number, including Manchester City, who permanently retired his number 23 shirt. 

For his contributions to football and charity in Cameroon, Foé was given a state funeral, a grand affair for a humble and unassuming man like Foé. But his legacy lives on almost 2 decades later where he is still fondly remembered by every one of his former clubs in his career. His legacy may be seen in many different ways from retired shirt numbers & a street named after him in Lyon. But his lasting legacy on football was that FIFA stepped up measures to ensure footballers would be looked after, which improved healthcare in football. These measures included making it mandatory to equip all stadiums hosting international games with defibrillators & FIFA introducing medical screenings of all players ahead of any FIFA competition, a policy which was of clear benefit to everyone. In fact, having a defibrillator in stadiums was what would later save the lives of Fabrice Muamba and Christian Eriksen, players who also suffered cardiac arrests on the pitch. 

But Sadly, his legacy has not been continued in his home country of Cameroon, a place where Foé tried to give as much as he possibly could, with a CNN report from 2013 found that his sports academy had been left to go to ruin due to a family dispute over money. Additionally, any money that the Cameroonian government had promised to ensure any of Foé’s ongoing projects would be completed never materialised. 

But this should not distract from the legacy of a man whose inherent goodness shone through to help others who needed aid. And that’s the legacy that’s deserving of Marc Vivien-Foé. He may have only been around briefly, on his planet or with West Ham, but his legacy of being a good man who helped others with the power his position could muster is a legacy that demands our remembrance.

Thanks for reading today’s post on the late & great Marc Vivien Foé. 

If you’d like to read the CNN report I mentioned, here is it: https://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/26/sport/football/marc-vivien-foe-anniversary/index.html

And Foé’s own words were taken from an interview in Brian Belton’s book, ‘The Black Hammers’.