Cameroon coach Winfried Schafer received the dreaded vote of confidence on Monday when his boss told him his job was safe despite the team's African Nations Cup quarter-final defeat to Nigeria.
The German guided the team to the continental title in 2002 but suffered a miserable World Cup in 2002 when the Indomitable Lions failed to get beyond the first round.
Moments after Sunday's defeat in Monastir, Schafer was fending off questions over his future and, on Monday, Cameroon football federation president Iya Mohammed came to his rescue.
"The federation has total confidence in Winfried Schafer. I have always said that we want a coach with long-term objectives. We can't change coaches every time we lose.
"We can't win all of the time. In sport, you win some and you lose some. The important thing is to learn lessons from your failures and take measures to rectify them," said Mohammed.
The federation boss insisted that now the team must regroup and prepare for the 2006 World Cup qualifiers which get underway in June.
"We must assess and analyse the situation," said Mohammed. "We lost but we had some bad luck. Now the coaching staff have some hard work ahead of them especially in their defensive planning.
"It was not normal that everybody was trying to score. They all went up front, leaving a lot of space for the opponents behind them and we got caught on a counter attack."
Schafer had insisted in the aftermath of Sunday's 2-1 defeat to Nigeria, which ended Cameroon's hopes of a third successive African Nations Cup title, that he would be staying on.
"Why should I resign?" he said. "Cameroon are still a great team with huge potential at the highest level. The players will recover from this."
Schafer admitted that the team missed the influence of Marc Vivien Foe who collapsed and died at the Confederations Cup last year.
"He was a real personality on the pitch. We really missed someone like him," said the coach.