{"id":219731,"date":"2026-01-08T23:22:39","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T21:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/west-africa\/cameroon\/cameroon-carlos-baleba-the-new-pillar-of-cameroons-young-afcon-side\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T23:22:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T21:22:39","slug":"cameroon-carlos-baleba-the-new-pillar-of-cameroons-young-afcon-side","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/west-africa\/cameroon\/cameroon-carlos-baleba-the-new-pillar-of-cameroons-young-afcon-side\/","title":{"rendered":"Cameroon: Carlos Baleba &#8211; the New Pillar of Cameroon&#8217;s Young Afcon Side"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"61\">If Christian Kofane is the spark up front, Carlos Baleba is the engine at the heart of Cameroon&#8217;s midfield &#8212; a player around whom this young team is being built. At just 22 years old, Baleba is already showing signs of a worldclass midfielder, combining intelligence, energy, and technical skill in a way that gives the Indomitable Lions balance and control.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"74\">Groomed at the prestigious \u00c9cole de Football Boissons du Cameroun (EFBC), Baleba developed the technical foundation and tactical awareness&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202601080364.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 West Africa <a title=\"Cameroon\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/west-africa\/cameroon\/\">Cameroon<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If Christian Kofane is the spark up front, Carlos Baleba is the engine at the heart of Cameroon&#8217;s midfield &#8212; a player around whom this young team is being built. At just 22 years old, Baleba is already showing signs of a worldclass midfielder, combining intelligence, energy, and technical skill in a way that gives [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":219732,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[376],"tags":[9488,258,256,53314,4698,377,4331,15613,257,10462,10473,254,7720],"class_list":["post-219731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cameroon","tag-afcon","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-baleba","tag-cameroon","tag-cameroon-news","tag-cameroons","tag-carlos","tag-news","tag-pillar","tag-side","tag-south-africa-today","tag-young"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}