Kaytu “No Nonsense” Smith-Could make the difference
The Coach I first met 15 yrs ago


By Isaac Yeah
isaacyeah2000@yahoo.com

The year was 1997, after my official retirement as a football player for many years in the LFA-Gardnersville 3rd Division league and having played additional four seasons for Sinkor United and Suamah FC in the LFA Second Division league in 1995, I started to practice as a journalist and joined the folks at the Inquirer Newspaper under the tutelage of Editor Bana Sackey and Sports Reporter Sidiki Trawally.

In that that year, I won the Inter-School Sports Association, (ISSA)the Liberia Basketball Federation, (LBF), and the Liberia Football Association (LFA) sports reporter of the year awards. Those days, thEse awards were highly converted as the field was filled with some of the best brains in Liberian Sports Writing history, Ikosa Ike, Malcolm Joseph, Trokon Tarr, Emmanuel Geeza Williams, Momolu VO Sirleaf, Simon Reeves, Sidiki Trawally, Mozart Dennis, Sheriff Adams, Seido Williams, Omari Jackson, Gibson Jerue and many other top-profile writers, it was a profession of respect and dignity, entry was tough and enduring.

After I received the LFA Award, I met Coach Kaytu Smith the next day at the Liberia Football Association headquarters and he said to me”Pekin, you deserve this award, I read your stories and articles in the Sports Journal Newspaper, if you continue, you will be a great journalist”. It was strange however, because hardly football coaches, players and administrators could praise a journalist for his work due to what they call critical reporting. I was thrown out of the now burned Holiday Inn Hotel on Carey Street where the Lone Star Team was camped by LFA Securities, on grounds that I was too critical of the coaches’ selection process and was not welcome in the hotel. I put up some resistance arguing that the Lone Star was the property of the Liberian people and government, but again, the Coach at the time was under the complete control of a few senior players, so they insisted I should not enter the camp, but I managed on several occasions to sneak stories and articles out of the camp.

At that time if my recollection is correct, Kaytu Smith was the coach of either Bame or Baccus Marines and from there I was keen in following his coaching exploits and progress. I saw him making Bame, a team that could hardly get transportation and support, and single-handedly supported by Former Education Minister Dr. Theophilus Sonpon, Kaytu made Bame a formidable side in Liberian football. He was a coach that wanted the best of his players and later transition to Baccus Marines FC taking them from nowhere to a glorious place, making in to the top of the league and a very crack team.

I was one of two journalist, the other is my friend and brother Simon Reeves, now in Europe who traveled with Coach Kaytu Smith and Henry Browne around the city for the selection of players that brought the U-13,-U134 and the U-15 Gothia Cup Tournament held in Sweden and Denmark winning some games as high as 12-0, 15-0, 20-0. This selection process picked players like Dulee Johnson, Zar Kramgar, Melvin King, Dioh Williams and others, who are current players of the National Football Team of Liberia.

ONLY IF Kaytu Smith is the same man I met 15 years ago, no nonsense coach, a football technician, the disciplinarian and man of honor, than I will have no reason to doubt his success as the Senior Coach of the National Football Team, but again Kaytu needs to request a clear and defined roadmap from the LFA. I have seen several Liberian and foreign coaches come and go in failure, because they had no roadmap from the Liberia Football Association, LFA as to how they want their team to go and what results they would expect. German Coach Antoine Hey was cut between the scissors on grooming a home based team as proposed by the Ministry of Youth and Sports or qualify the Lone Star team as suggested by the LFA. He failed miserable, because football authorities could not agree on what roadmap to use and prepare the Liberian people for the results expected.

Publication of Roadmap and Contract:
The Liberia Football Association and Coach Kaytu Smith will need to be revealed to the Liberian people and make the coach roadmap public and contract publish. Coach Smith is taking over a job for the Liberian people, he needs to report to the Liberian people through the LFA and so all of the coaches activities, programs and projects for the Lone Star must be in the domain of the Liberia people, this will make them (The Liberian people) to understand the target goals, reasons for success or failures and how they can rally support for the Lone Star.

In the past, the media and the LFA have been in serious tussle over the defined contract of coaches and making those contracts public. In the specific contract of Antoine Hey, the LFA made a serious error, by giving a foreign coach a lucrative job and without any deliverables. His contract was vague to the point that it didn’t make him accountable to failures or successes. He could decide to win or lose and still kept his contract, that was highly unprofessional and a waste of scarce public resources paid than by Lone Star cell. I was a part of the generation of that money since I was serving as Secretary General of the Ministry of Youth and Sports constituted Lone Star Mobilization Committee.

Challenges Ahead:
Coach Kaytu Smith has two major challenges in ahead. The first is the interference in the coaching job my executives of the Liberia Football Association and the Ministry of Youth and Sports. In the recent past, Kadala Kromah,Jericho Nagbe, Antoine Hey and the others have seen themselves failed miserably only trying to please their employers either at the MYS or the LFA. In some cases, football authorities were preparing the list for the foreign based players to invite, this led to the team’s dismal performance in major competitions.

I remember, a former Deputy Sports Minister telling me, we need to bring children from the County Meet to form part of the Lone Star. I just realized by that statement that those who were handling our football programs were all either learners and wanted a Lone Star that they could control at the expense of the Liberian people resources without counting the cost. All National Teams around the world are drawn from experience players in both the domestic or international leagues and for a Deputy Minister to suggest to me that he wanted County Meet players in the Senior National Team Squad was highly unbelievable.

The Second challenge that Coach Smith could probably face, will be indiscipline. Majority of our Senior National Team players are very disrespectful, disobedient and indiscipline. Coach Smith will either have to meet this act head on or prepare for a dismal failure, but again, if this Kaytu Smith is the one I met 15 years ago, I have no doubt, the opposite will be obvious, because he is a no-non-sense coach of high morale and disciplinary repute. He needs to set example by punishing players and officials who break camp laws by expelling them or banning them from games. Our team’s camp records in recent years have been too embarrassing. It has either been drunkenness by players, camp invasion by prostitutes, camp breaking and the rest. If a player or an official is not willing to abide by the rules and guidelines of the camp, that person deserves an expulsion.

Conclusion and recommendation:
Let me conclude by saying the Liberian sporting media of the past had been critical about the performance of players and their current form. From my reading these few years, that trend is not at its best. They are a few sports journalists who remain critical about the players’ performance and authorities’ decisions, a lot of them are now bending of praise singing, especially players of their interest. This has been a disturbing development. And, a mix of listening to what they write and doing an investigation and probably giving the player(s) a trial in a test match (es) to enable the technical staff to review the players’ performance will add to the value of the selection process and the results.

The stories of Melvin King(Goal-Keeper), David Gbemie and Patrick Gerhart are among the few that I can remember, they were praised and recommended to National Team and the performance turned out to be some of worst in Liberian recruitment history.

Let me conclude by inviting Coach Kaytu Smith, a very intelligent, discipline and highly technical coach to the Lone Star team, as its Head Coach and Technical Director. The challenges ahead are enormous but surmountable and so his ability to be more upright and focus will earn him a good place in Liberian football history, remember the beginning will not be easy, but I can assure you, if you want to succeed, be you “OWN MAN” stop listening to too many bystander and intruders who interests are selfish and detrimental.


Isaac C. Yeah is former President of the Sports Writers Association of Liberia.
He can be reach at:
isaacyeah2000@yahoo.com