Malabo Trip Frustrating

By Wleh Bedell
bedellblessing@yahoo.com
+2316106293

From 8:00 AM local time to 11:00 pm, the Lone Star of Liberia trip to Malabo, the Capital of Equatorial Guinea can be termed as boring, frustrating, demoralizing and irritating. The red, white and blue outfit has come this far to the Central African oil rich country to engage the Nzalang (Thunder) Lions on Wednesday, August 15, which is a FIFA approved friendly date.

But, while the staging of said match can be termed as a positive step as far as preparations for both teams are concerned with Liberia facing Nigeria at home on September 9, and Equatorial Guinea sorting things out with Congo DR the same day away in the final round, first leg match of the AFCON 2013 finals, the entire arrangement leading to the trip or that has culminated into the trip can be described as awkward and absurd.

The problem from an intrepid point is mainly due to a plethora of delays from the hosts as there is no need to mince words on such a disheartening issue which has once more shown the ugly and disorganized side of the African game that generally continues to to be miles behind.

Initially, the trip was slated for Monday, August 12, which would have given the players a two day rest ahead of the friendly. But, with the hosts providing a plane in the form of a chartered flight for the trip, it was put to the following day with the team manager of Equatorial Guinea, Jesus Ndong Sam noting " we could not come to Liberia on Monday for the Lone Star because the plane (Ceibar Air, the country's national airline) made two trips to the commercial Capital Bata in taking a high power government delegation for a meeting, and we did not want to bring the smaller plane (32 seated) to Liberia which would have been embarrassing as only the playing body and the technical crew might have traveled, so we had to wait for the bigger plane" The plane returned to Malabo very late, thus the trip had to be put to Tuesday, August 13.

There were however delays as everyone making the trip including delegation head Rep. Edwin Melvin Snowe were made to understand that check in time at the RIA would be 9:00 AM, but to the discontentment of the delegation, the plane from Malabo arrived at 3:45 PM with the take off time been 5:06 PM. After surprisingly spending three hours on the flight to get to Lome, there was close to an hour spend there for refueling of the plane.

Two hours would be spend from Lome to Malabo and after arrival there was more frustration as more than two hours was spend on the airport with little or no security check but just sitting and little movement with repeated instructions, all that can be described as unnecessary delays. A furious Coach kaetu Smith then told the hosts team Manager, "you don't treat athletes this way. "We would have never done this to your team"

In the end, the delegation arrived at the Hotel Tropicana by 12:05 (after midnight). Note that the country is an hour ahead of Liberia which means the delegation arrived 1:05 Liberian time. Technically, the trip lasted for 15 hours, but this time not just in the air, but delays in getting flight, time wasting on the airport, etc.

All was not completely over as dinner or breakfast since it was already the new day was served by 2:00 AM with the players going to bed an hour later. This means they players had the most torrid of time and since they are playing on Wednesday, it would be a tall order. How well will the technical crew motivate them in such a stressful period remains to be seen.

The team might do some light training in the morning hours with the game reportedly pushed from 4:00PM local time to 7:00 PM which will be 6:00 PM in Liberia mainly due to the delay. The body language of the players said it all as some have already started suffering from fatigue. But, if they can be mentally tough in such weighty period and impress, such melee would be highly memorable.