The Gravediggers of Liberian Football

                                              

Marbue Richards-Sports Ministry official         Adolph Lawrence-LFA official 
 

By Simon Reeves

I want to speculate that the LFA and Ministry of Youth and Sports are the gravediggers of Liberian football.

The two need not tell me about their sins. I hear about them every day. What should I say after reading news accounts of the buffoonery-corruption, mismanagement, disorganization, petty quarrels, you name it- that goes on at the institutions?  The latest being a LFA staff murdering a goat as a sacrifice to keep President Izetta Wesley’s goodwill.

Besides, one cannot hold his spleen when you hear that the national team is travelin g to Germany for weeks, on an important training camp, with three officials and without a reporter!

What will the three be doing? Zilch. Or, as I suspect, they will be having a nice vacation and be paid for it.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t have any official on the trip. But one person will suffice.

Is it too hard to understand that the interest of Liberians in news about their team is profound and that the only person who can satisfy their appetite for unbiased information about the Lone Star, during this training camp, is a reporter?

We want to know what the players do when they wake up till they go to bed. We want to know how they respond to the training, the level of football knowledge that will be imparted and so on. Only a journalist can fill us in on those questions.

Someone told me how the horde of officials who journeyed with the team to Cameroon last year demanded the best lodging and food for themselves and ordered the players around as if they were their yard boys. Having too many of these officials on these trips is counter-productive. They never hold their egos in check.

Our football officials cannot stop me from wondering why they don’t give a damn about the betterment of the game. And more importantly, why they keep thinking that the Liberian people are fools.. They won’t prevent me from developing ill feelings about the FIFA money ending up in private pockets.

I am beginning to think that Liberians should not expect too much from the campaign that we are about to begin. At least, then, we will not be frustrated when the inevitable comes to pass.

About the author: Reeves, a Liberian journalist in Sweden, writes for BBC Sports. Reach him at editor@nanews.net