By Kemoh Sesay
The home-based national football team, Leone Stars departs Freetown for Ghana today 19th November to take part in the West African Football Union, WAFU tournament which starts on Thursday 21st November in the Ghanaian capital amid controversy as to what money to accept and what not to.
The controversy stems from a Le 50 million donation by sports-betting company, Mercury International on the request of sports minister, Paul Kamara.
While the minister gave each of the 18 players Le 1 million at a ceremony yesterday, the Secretary General of the SLFA Abdul Rahman Swaray said they were neither aware of it nor would it be paid towards the Leone Stars efforts as "all the money required” had been “provided by the SLFA”.
On preparations, Leone Stars’ head coach Johnny Mckinstry confirmed that 18 players would travel to Accra for the competition "as required by the rules of the competition". He said his players were "very much focused and committed and I believe we can do better in Ghana because the players are now open to new ideas".
He said that "the preparation of the team from the past few months is tremendous, the boys have proven well and I believe that we will produce result in Ghana” warning
however that “if we lose a game note that the other team played very well’’.
Sierra Leone are grouped with Ghana, Burkina Faso and Benin and will open their campaign against hosts Ghana.
But the head coach said no team that would come up against Sierra Leone would find the team easy and noted that because Ghana, Burkina Faso and Benin had already qualified for the Africa Nations cup, they will prove more difficult in that group.
He announced that this was the start of the process of re-building a home-based team that would replace the current crop of the regular national senior players.
(C) Politico 19/11/13
