Cameroonian former professional footballer who played as a forward, Albert Roger Miller known as Roger Milla turned 58 today.
He was one of the first African players to be major stars on the international stage. He played in three World Cups for the Cameroon national team.

He achieved international stardom at 38 years old, an age at which most forwards have retired, by scoring four goals at the 1990 FIFA World Cup. He helped Cameroon become the first African team to reach the World Cup quarter-finals.
Four years later, at the age of 42, Milla became the oldest goalscorer in World Cup history by scoring against Russia in the 1994 FIFA World Cup.

When the Cameroon’s president demanded that a soon-to-turn 38-year-old striker, Roger Milla be included in the World Cup squad, it was seen as a new low for African football.
The game on the continent had long been dogged by the fatuous interventions of powerful politicians.

But messing with selection for the sport’s global showpiece event seemed hare-brained in the extreme.

President Paul Biya had watched Milla play a charity game a few weeks before and insisted he be included in the squad for the 1990 finals in Italy.

Milla was days away from turning 38, earning retirement money playing on the French island of Reunion and long past his heyday.

He had competed at the 1982 World Cup.

He had played in three Africa Cup of Nations finals and scored more than 100 Ligue 1 goals for Bastia, St Etienne and Montpellier.

“I got a call from the President who said he thought I should play and I was in no position to argue,” Milla remembered.

Biya’s order turned out to be a fortuitous master stroke, even though Milla himself was not sure whether he would cut it.

“I knew that if I got into shape I’d have a chance to make an impact,” he said.

“When I returned to the national side I got a warm welcome from the younger players. But the older ones had ganged up against me and were not so happy to see me.”

However, that had all changed as the veteran forward captured international imagination for his trademark goal celebration of running to the corner flag and performing a dance as he celebrated a goal in Cameroon’s unlikely march to the World Cup quarter-finals.

In the years that have followed, he has been recognised as a pioneer of the many unconventional and imaginative goal celebrations seen since then.

Roger Milla and his famous celebration after scoring for Cameroon at the 1990 World Cup in Italy.
The dance is better remembered than the breakaway goal against Colombia as Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions went further at the tournament than any African team had been before, eventually losing to England in extra time in a tense quarter-final.

“We just really wanted to have fun but that we achieved new things for African football made it special,” Milla added.

In all, he scored four goals at Italia 90 and extended his record as the tournament’s oldest goal scorer when he netted one more at the World Cup in the U.S. four years later.

By then Milla had become a symbol for a continent, with his exploits after emerging from semi-retirement earning him the accolade as the best African footballer of the 20th century.

In 2004 he was named by Pelé in the FIFA 100 list of the world's greatest living players. In 2007, the Confederation of African Football named Milla the best African player of the previous 50 years.

Milla starred in a Coca-Cola advertisement for 2010 FIFA World Cup as the originator of dancing whilst celebrating when scoring a goal. He is seen in the crowd drinking Coca-Cola.

In 2019, Roger Milla created Noma Fund association, alongside Joseph-Antoine Bell and the medical epidemiologist Dr Georges-Barthélémy Nko’Ayissi.

Focus on this commitment of the “old lion”, who wants to make things happen so that Noma disease is no longer a scourge for the world’s poorest children.