André Onana looks in an extensive interview with the Daily Mail on his widely reported doping suspension. The goalkeeper of Ajax was stopped at one point by the Belgian police for control. When the officers realized that they were dealing with Onana, the car of the closing post from Cameroon was thoroughly examined. He thinks this has to do with the much-discussed doping case that kept him sidelined for almost a year.
“The police in Belgium stopped me and it all went very normally,” Onana opened his review to the English newspaper. “They asked, ‘How are you? Can we see your papers?’ But when I showed my identity card, I was immediately recognized by one of them. He immediately said: “Mr Onana, get out of the car. I got out of my car and they immediately started checking the whole car! And then I heard them in say in French: ‘This is a man who uses drugs’. I can laugh about it now, but the only thing that stopped me from fighting then was the fact that I had to deal with the police.”
Onana knew he had the stamp of a doping user, but that only motivated him more to come back stronger. The suspension gave him the opportunity to train extra, watch videos of himself, analyze workouts and work on his shortcomings. The Ajax goalkeeper also emphasizes towards the Daily Mail that he has done a lot of physical work in the past year. “When I returned to Ajax, they immediately said that it was impossible that I had been suspended for nine months.”
The goalkeeper who will probably leave Ajax after this season has benefited a lot from general manager Edwin van der Sar, especially in the doping year, who also acted at a top level for years. “It is impossible to have a better football Godfather to have. After every defeat he came to me. He knows that I am very bad at dealing with defeats. I was often advised. We had a good relationship, he was of course one of the best goalkeepers in the world in his day,” said the grateful Onana.
“Occasionally he trained with us,” Onana continues his story. “Especially in the prep or when he was preparing for a game with the veterans. If there’s a Legends Game I always saw him appear with his goalkeeper gloves.” Van der Sar often reassured Onana, including before the Europa League final in 2017 against Manchester United in Sweden. “Six months before that, I was still playing for 3,000 people in the second team. Now the whole world was watching and at that time I was only nineteen years old. I told the trainer (Peter Bosz, ed.) that I couldn’t play, it didn’t feel right.”
Thanks to Van der Sar’s words, Onana simply entered the field for the European final. “In an interview before the match, he said: ‘Tell André I didn’t bring my goalkeeper gloves, so he will have to play’. I woke up on the day of the match and immediately came across that story. “I can’t do anything about it, because Van der Sar had already said that I just had to play, whether I felt good or not. After that game against Manchester United I told myself that I will never start a duel with fear again.” , the keeper from Cameroon concludes.