WORLD CUP USA '94 / THE FIRST ROUND : Getting Here Not Easy for Cameroon : Group B: After all the trouble they've seen, Lions are happy with a tie.

By MIKE PENNER

June 20, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Amid sweltering on-field temperatures and incessant in-house bickering, the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon played Sweden evenly Sunday at the Rose Bowl in the first match of Group B round-robin competition in the 1994 World Cup.

Or, to put it in lay terms for the average American sports fan, the Lions tied the Vikings in their season opener.

Cameroon blew a big lead--it was 2-1 before the Swedes tied it in the 75th minute on a ricochet off the crossbar and a put-in by Martin Dahlin--but the Lions still walked away feeling as if they had pulled off a fast one.

“There can be no disappointment,” goalkeeper Joseph-Antoine Bell said, “if you know what has happened with this team. There is no reason to expect a team with the amount of problems we have to win against a team with no problems at all.”

You mean the Swedes don’t need their coach to fish into his own pocket to provide his players with the bare necessities of life--bottled water and soccer balls?

You mean in Sweden, it’s not common practice for a player to punch out the coach after learning he has been cut from the national team?

Swedes don’t go through four coaches in three years . . . and don’t rebel when their 1990 World Cup hero is assigned a roster spot on the 1994 team . . . and are never forced to cancel a night workout because no one called ahead to turn on the lights because the phone company had cut off service?

Happens all the time in Cameroon, and no wonder they call them Indomitable. The other teams arrived at this tournament via customary means--air and bus transport. The Lions got here only by tackling an obstacle course.

“It has affected us, for sure,” Bell said. “Not the play, but the preparation.

“If you have to deal with something else besides football, you are not going to pay enough attention to the game.”

Bell said he doesn’t blame anybody, “because we are going forward. At least we are going forward.”

Yes, they are. From zero Group B points on Sunday morning to one point by sundown, it counts as progress.

Under the circumstances, Bell couldn’t have asked for more.

“We are not the only children God sent on this earth,” Bell reasoned. “If you go out there with all the problems we have, and at 1:30 you are talking about your problems and not football and at 4:30 you go out and beat Sweden, you are world champions.”

So Bell could only laugh when he heard of the Swedish players’ complaints about the oppressive weather conditions at the Rose Bowl on Sunday.

Brother, Bell was in effect saying, Anders and Magnus and Lars do not know the trouble I have seen.

Bell sat the bench during the 1990 World Cup, even though he is the best goalkeeper in the country, because he dared to speak out on behalf of his teammates and demand a bigger qualifying bonus than the piddly $6,000 stipend they were granted by the Cameroon soccer federation.

Federation officials listened to Bell’s eloquent plea and promptly ordered him replaced in the starting lineup by Thomas N’Kono.

Since then, Bell has seen the federation hire and fire four coaches; watched the latest, Henri Michel, get punched in the face by Jean-Claude Pagal after cutting Pagal from the national team; and heard the dressing-room uproar when aging Roger Milla was awarded a 1994 roster spot by presidential decree.

Heat? What heat?

As if to mock the sweating Swedes, Bell dressed warm for the occasion, pulling on long, heat-absorbing black sweat pants and bright yellow leggings over them. On a cloudless day, he also wore a black baseball cap for intermittent periods. On, off, on, off. With Cameroon forcing most of the action on the other side of the field, Bell figured he might as well pass the time by amusing himself.

He didn’t seem particularly broken-hearted over the equalizing goal that hit the crossbar after tipping off his hands and bounding back to Dahlin, who knocked the ball down with his chest and left-footed it inside the left post.

“Lucky?” Bell said in response to a reporter’s query. “You cannot say that, because (Dahlin) did what he had to do. If the direction of the ball does not go straight, well, that’s what football is about.”

All things considered, Bell will take a 2-2 tie and move on.

“What we are doing,” he said, “is trying to make good of a bad situation.”