Yafoot

Yafoot spent five seasons chasing the pattern that had briefly worked for them. Promoted to the MTN Elite One in 2018, the Yaoundé side stayed at that level through 2023, long enough to become familiar rather than surprising, before finishing 11th in the 2022-23 campaign and dropping back to the second tier.

That single promotion still defines the club. Yafoot, officially Football Club Yaoundé II, won the Elite Two second division in 2017, the only honour attached to the club's name, and it came after two decades of existing without much to show for it since the founding in 1996. The colours are yellow and green, and home matches are played in front of no more than 2,000 people at Stade Annexe 1 Omnisport, a ground built for exactly that scale of club rather than for the first-division crowds that briefly visited it.

Yaoundé is not short of football clubs chasing attention in the capital, and Yafoot has generally sat among the city's smaller names, the kind that needs a promotion to be noticed beyond its own supporters. The 2017 title did that job. It also set the shape of the club's history since: five seasons in the top flight, one in the second division before it, and a return to Elite Two after 2023 that put Yafoot back among the clubs still waiting for a second chance at the level they briefly held.

Two thousand seats, one promotion, five years at the top before coming back down.