Mucanjo, Benjamin

Mukanjo was born on November 12, 1988 in the Cameroonian city of Douala . He started playing football at the local “Caji Sports Academy”, from which he later moved to the French Rennes Academy ^[3] . For two years, Benjamin studied at the academy of the French club, and also played for the club's youth team in the French championship for youth teams.

In 2007, Benjamin received an offer from Rennes Football Club to sign a professional contract, which Mukanjo accepted ^[4] . Due to the high competition in the team, he was unable to fully participate in the matches, so he was transferred to the second team, which acted in the fourth level division of France.

In 2008, the leadership of the French club decided to send the player on loan to L'Entent, who played in the third most important League of France ^{[5] [6]} . But here, the Cameroonian footballer took part in only a few matches of the club, having played 13 matches in a season and scoring 2 goals.

In the summer of 2009, Benjamin became interested in Nim Olympic , who played in League 2 ^[7] . On August 31, the player accepted the club’s offer of transfer and signed a two-year contract. The head coach of the club, where Cameroonians moved, trusted the player and tried to put him in the starting lineup of the team as often as possible, because Benjamin had all the necessary qualities of a talented striker. For a season and a half, Benjamin Mukanjo played 46 matches for Nim Olympic, scoring 7 goals against his rivals.

In early 2011, it was bought out for half a million euros by the football club "Monaco" ^{[8] [9]} . However, Benjamin’s three goals did not help the Monegasques to avoid relegation to Ligue 2, and in the summer of 2011 the Cameroonian legionary transferred to Nancy for 2.5 million euros ^{[10] [11]} . In the first two seasons in Nancy, he scored 10 goals, but this team with Mukanjo in the summer of 2013 flew out of the elite of French football. The next season, 2013/14, having marked 9 times in League 2 matches, Benjamin set a personal performance record, but Nancy took 4th place and could not get one of the three trips to the elite.

In the 2014/15 season, he played for the Reims .

On July 13, 2017, Jiangsu Sunning Club announced the transfer of Benjamin Mukanjo from Lorient . The term of the contract is 2 years ^[12] . At the end of the 2018 season, he returned from lease to the Beijing Jinhe ^[13] .

He played for the youth team of Cameroon under 20 years old, with whom he qualified for the Youth (U-20) African Championship. He scored 2 goals at the tournament, but the team took the last place in the group and did not reach the playoffs.

June 4, 2011 he made his debut in official matches as part of the national team of Cameroon in the selection for the African Cup of Nations in 2012 against the national team of Senegal (0: 0). Benjamin came out in the first team and at 84 minutes was replaced by Pierre Webo.

In 2014, he fell into the application of the national team for the World Cup in Brazil . He played 16 matches for the main team of the country, scored 2 goals.

Cameroon hit the bottom in a match with Croatia at the 2014 World Cup, when Benoit Assou-Ekotto and Benjamin Mucanjo got into a skirmish right on the field. Assu-Ekotto butted Mukanjo with his head, and he answered with a wave of his partner. For the good fortune of Cameroon, an angry colleague ran up to scatter forward Pierre Webo. “This behavior is disgusting. This cannot be allowed. It's impossible. To be honest, there were difficult days inside the team - it was difficult to set up the players for full-fledged work ... ”Volker Finke said. Referee of the match Pedro Proance left this episode unattended. By this moment, Cameroonians were already losing with a score of 0-4 and were playing in the minority - Alex Song was removed in the 40th minute, in a non-player episode he punched Mario Mandzhukich in the back with his fist. As a result, Cameroon took the last place in the group after losing all 3 matches, having missed 9 goals and scoring only one.