KURT ZOUMA, HIS CAT AND THE MEDIA OVERKILL
Kurt Zouma is a French footballer who worked very hard to get his place in a Chelsea team packed with international footballers brought there by the deep pockets of Roman Abramovich. He was very patient in his career development. His game improved in recent times such that West Ham came asking for his services and he moved across London. Zouma conducts himself very well on the field of play. He is only cautioned when he springs some of his hard tackles; he is not known for having big arguments with colleague players and match officials. As far as we are concerned, he is a good guy.
It’s now being openly speculated that Zouma could well end up in jail because he maltreated his cat. In a video that went viral, he is seen chasing the cat around his nice home and striking it for God knows what. So let’s clear this first, we are totally against cruelty to animals and we have no problem with people being sanctioned for being cruel to animals but we believe any such sanction should be proportionate and should be considered against the background of the individual at the center of the problem in totality. In this case it’s Kurt Zouma and we stand by what we have put in the first paragraph. All we can now add is that Zouma is not known as a violent or quarrelsome kind of fellow – a Roy Keane or Joey Barton kind of guy.
Why is everybody then on his case all over the place? When the British media smell blood, they really go for it but should the police and advertisers also always try to go with the flow?
1. To have had a cat at home in that country in the first place means Zouma loves animals – cats in particular. England is not like Sierra Leone where there are stray animals all over the place. We don’t know how long he’s had this particular one but we are sure vets would find zero signs of a pattern of abuse of this cat. Why do we now want to end Zouma’s bright career by sending him to jail?
2. Zouma has suffered a lot in the last week or so. He was badly treated when he appeared for West Ham’s last league match against Watford, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been taken away from him by West Ham over the incident and he looks set to be dropped for the next few games at least. How much can we do to hurt this man?
3. Those hypocrites called advertisers are also trying to pile the pressure on Zouma. They are withdrawing sponsorship from him to hurt his bank account. The same advertisers are still supporting the English Premier League, a league in which the players take a knee all the time to register their hatred for RACISM but when BLACK players miss a penalty, they are subjected to vile online RACISM. From the same Manchester United, Cristiano Ronaldo and Anthony Elanga missed penalties. Ronaldo had a sound sleep but Elanga suffered RACIST attacks. Why not withdraw funding from the league that is unable to deal with RACISM.
4. Wayne Rooney, the team manager for Derby, said in a media interview that he went into a match against Chelsea in his playing days ready to hurt an opponent. He said he prepared his boots with iron studs and made sure he sunk it into the body of John Terry. All we’ve heard so far is that the FA would speak to him. We have not heard from advertisers who, by their own VERY HIGH standards should have asked Derby to sack the man or they do what they have done with Zouma.
We have just been reminded that some are more equal than others.
CHRIS KAMARA AND THE SLFA SUITCASE WAHALA
In our last edition we voiced support for the SLFA in their fight to retrieve suitcases and their contents from those young men who recently represented us in AfCON. Chris Kamara told the world there was an agreement that the suitcases and their contents would be returned to the SLFA after the tournament and that some players had already done that. We still stand by the SLFA if that was agreed at the time the suitcases were being handed over to the players. And we will not get into any argy-bargy about the boxes being low quality and all that. If there was an agreement to return them, the players MUST return them. We are getting new information about the issue but our position is unchanged until we are able to determine otherwise.
We do not agree with the SLFA’s decision to withhold money provided for the players by a private organization. They can only withhold SLFA money, not money donated to the players by a private person. The donors are now scandalized by the way things have turned out.
Having said that, we think there are other extremely important things that Chris Kamara’s SLFA should be working on right now instead of running after suitcases.
1. Why not return the hundreds of millions of Leones hurriedly withdrawn from the special FA Cup 2019 account without informing the original signatories. Our ACC sources say the SLFA assured Afro Boy that the money would be paid back into that same account. How far with that now?
2. We have also heard that somebody received tens of thousands of dollars in ex-gratia payment from the SLFA. Can that be justified under any circumstances? Maybe Chris Kamara should also try and retrieve that money so we can start female football.
3. Have the Executive Committee members who received the suitcases also returned theirs? We can’t have one law for players and another for officials relating to the same issue.
4. There was a lady who flew business class along with a big guy at SLFA for the friendly match in Turkey. Can we also get the cost of her flight ticket, hotel accommodation, meals and shopping? We want that money to go into the bank account of the SLFA. By the way, we were supposed to play two friendly matches in Turkey, we played only ONE. Has the SLFA properly retired the remaining cash? Chris should check that out.
5. We said it from the outset that we have somebody who is facing serious blackmail leading the SLFA. The real president of that organization is the lady who was forced out by the popular will of the good people of Sierra Leone. Her people who are strategically in that SLFA will one day throw the hostage out.
LET’S STOP LAWLESS OKADA RIDERS NOW OR ELSE…
A dangerous behavior pattern has emerged of how Okada boys behave across the country whenever one of them is accidentally knocked down by a vehicle. For them, it’s simple: they attack the driver, give him a sound beating, set the vehicle on fire and disperse. They execute this with remarkable precision like something planned in a training ground and routinely rehearsed. We have examples of such behavior in FOUR places in Freetown alone in recent times.
For many people it’s beginning to look as if Sovula has NO clue how to deal with this. We should let him know that this is totally unacceptable. We live in a democracy where the rule of law prevails and we should NEVER allow a section of the public to put themselves above the law.
Okada riders are mostly young jobless boys with very little formal education or skills to compete for the few jobs going around these day so they find a motorcycle by some means and take to the roads. They are rough and rude. They violate traffic rules and in that recklessness have sent many of their passengers either to hospital or their early grave. To know how reckless and dangerous they are, a few questions at the records section of the Emergency Hospital at Goderich are enough.
The other side to the Okada riding venture is that they smash private cars daily. They either flee the scene or beg for mercy. That’s the same way they behave when they knock commuters down. In all of this, there is no evidence of people chasing them and burning down their motorcycles. Why should they believe by burning one vehicle, no other Okada boy would be killed the next day?
It’s time for Sovula to end the lawlessness and keep ordinary people safe.
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