LEONE STARS: WE ARE PAYING BIG MONEY TO BE HUMILIATED ABROAD
The next FIFA ranking will not be kind to this Land that we Love because we have now found ourselves in a fine mess of our own making. The SLFA hostage president admitted the other day on social media that it was a mighty blunder to have gone to South Africa in the first place to play Bafana Bafana. He said: “Maybe we could have called off the game when the SA federation could not offer us a visa on arrival. I believe this is more or less the reason why we lost horribly. We could not get into SA on time…” Since this is all the man has put forward as explanation for our humiliation in Johannesburg we have to use it as the position from which to tell him as his technical officers that they have failed us. Why were they so eager to go to South Africa?
The other nonsense about trying out new young players in the team is totally unacceptable. That’s not the way to introduce new players to the game at national level. We will deal with some of these issues in detail soon but for now let’s make the following points:
1. This per diem thing is killing our football. Again we will go into a bit more detail when next we tackle issues with the most popular sport in this country. The love for per diem took a good many of those officials to South Africa and Morocco, nothing else.
2. We have to start by cutting the size of our delegations that we send abroad on such matches. We should limit the officials to only technical people that MUST, as per requirement, be present for such events. Politicians, special advisers and official media people from institutions connected to the game should stay home. Independent media should be given the opportunity to cover such events. In any case we all normally witness the game. Only independent media can provide the back story.
3. We have nothing against John Keister but we believe he needs help to take himself to the next level. Somehow we believe he has reached a height beyond which he cannot proceed without help. We are now getting diminishing returns. How about sending him abroad for refresher training for something like THREE months in a good country? We pay the guy SEVEN THOUSAND US DOLLARS a month and look at the shambolic returns from the field.
4. This idea that we went to South Africa to try out new players and all this and that is not going down well with us. What we saw at the FNB stadium was a disgrace. We are serious-minded people so those who want to put new talents to test should do so in Freetown. We want established professionals in our NATIONAL TEAM. Please.
ABACHA STREET CLEARED SO WHAT NEXT?
Let’s not get into the question of whether it was a good thing or not that Abacha Street was cleared of street trading in the aftermath of that horrendous attack on the city on 10th August. We don’t shy away from the most controversial of topics but that’s not our focus for today. In fact, we have to say that Abacha Street is only partially cleared because traders are still converging there to sell their wares just that their stalls have been removed and guard rails put in place to stop traders encroaching on the right of way.
When we passed through the place last weekend we didn’t quite like what we saw. This was on a Sunday but some traders were still hanging around the place and the whole street was in really bad shape in terms of the amount of rubbish we saw packed in little corners and strewn across large sections of the road.
We also saw about THREE of the recently installed guardrails knocked down. None of those standing around could tell us what happened to those guardrails. Were they knocked down by some heavy duty truck or by people trying to sabotage what the government is doing on Abacha Street? These are things to investigate. It makes no sense to put those guardrails in what is clearly a controversial place and not find a way to protect that. We may wake up one morning to find all of them knocked down.
While we wait for Sewa Grounds Market to be ready, we want to see the government doing the following:
1. Let’s keep Abacha Street in particular clean all the time. It lies in the middle of the city and it’s very dirty. The only difference with what obtained in the past is that the number of traders going there has been drastically reduced.
2. Let’s quickly restore those guardrails and put measures in place and make it totally impossible for anybody to knock them down and run.
3. We also need regular updates on the status of the work going on at Sewa Grounds Market. Our information is that the job should be completed by Christmas. Is that so?
GOVERNMENT-OWNED SECONDARY SCHOOLS AND WASSCE
Let’s start by congratulating all our children who performed extremely well in the recently announced WASSCE results. We also congratulate their teachers and their parents for playing important roles to bring them to our universities. We wish them well. Having said that, we want our hardworking Minister of Basic Education to talk to us about the situation in government-owned schools and even those called government-assisted schools. Almost all the best pupils came from PRIVATE SCHOOLS. What’s going on sir?
We are really tempted now to drill into the issues based on what we know from people in the industry but we want to give the Minister a chance to respond to our question. In fact we are not the only people asking this question. It’s all over social media. We know some people are only trying to take the shine off the good performance this year for political reasons. That’s what happens in Sierra Leone these days. However, there are thousands of other Sierra Leoneans who are genuinely concerned about what is happening in our government schools. They deserve some explanations from the Minister.
We have nothing against private schools. They are also teaching our children but they mostly serve those who can pay and in the current atmosphere in this country, we don’t want anyone to be left behind because of money. That’s why we are spending more than 20% of the national budget on education. So we are waiting for a few days for our Minister to say something. We will be back.
MUSA TOMBO WANTS TO RETURN TO BO RANGERS
If all goes well for Musa Tombo, he should be back in the RANGE in the southern city of BO. His contract was terminated just before he traveled to Libya. In their letter of termination Bo Rangers described the man as WHACKY. His tik tok wife also did her bit. She attacked the Chairman of the club suggesting he was doing underhand deals to stop her husband from traveling abroad to play for bigger clubs to make money.
So we’ve gone full circle – Tombo has gone to Libya. He is back playing in street corners as he awaits the result of an SLFA investigation into what happened in Libya. Tombo forced his way out by threatening to kill himself with a bread knife. The SLFA thinks there are contractual and ethical issues to investigate in the Libya saga and they have suspended Tombo from all football connected to them.
Out of the blue Tombo is on social media pleading to be re-employed by Bo Rangers. So far there’s no response from the RANGE. We can predict that Tombo will soon return to social media in a small room with a bread life threatening suicide if he is not allowed to return to the RANGE. It worked for him in Libya. It will work for him in Sierra Leone. Why not?
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