(From Our Archives)
The Liberia Football Association (LFA) recently kicked-off its District league among the 17 districts of Montserrado County. According to the LFA’s Competition Department ,the 17 districts had been divided into four zones (1, 2, 3, 4). One of the zones have five districts, while the remaining three host four districts each.
In zone one, District 1, 17, 5, and 10 are paired, while zone two has 16, 6, 9 and 2. Zone three shoulders 3, 15, 7, and 11. Zone four has 14, 8, 12, 13, and 4. The Competition Committee also appointed Sub- Committee Secretaries to spearhead the various zones in collaboration with their District Law makers.
This is a fresh beginning. Liberia started women’s football late 80’s long before other African countries. Then we had Executive Lioness. Pointers’ Sisters and others which produced the likes of now Senator Geraldine Doe Sheriff aka Lady Zico, Maima Bowmah aka Lady Oppong and Cecelia Taylor aka Double Trouble and many others.
So, Liberia should have one of the leading women’s football teams in Africa. But that is not the case. Since David Koitee left the Liberia Football Association Committee, the nosedive of women’s football here has continued progressing.
Early 1990 the LFA introduced the U-17 national league for boys. We had the likes of Mandela FC, Kotoko FC, Wiaka United, Cats Fc and SASA FC .I handled the later as Technical Director, combining that position with my journalistic duties with the now extinct Liberia Sports Life newspaper under the able Editorship of now United States based Bana Sackie, later of Inquirer newspaper fame.
Then Liberia Football Association’s General Secretary, Late Marcel Berthin had released a comprehensive grassroots male and female football development program. It was widely published in all local newspapers. According to the program U-!7 Female league was to follow in 1991.But that was not to be because the acrimonious civil war brought every endeavor, personal, group and national-football and other sports not spared ,to a standstill.
That program that was unfortunately frustrated by the bloody war also had it that football would be introduced for the females in the Inter School Sports Association (ISSA) then headed by one Mr.Brucein Myers, and the ever popular and crowd-pulling National Sports Meet. But decades after, women’s football ( for girls and ladies) have not made significant progress, especially when many African countries which started women’s football years later, like Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Mali are making remarkable progress.
What went wrong is that succeeding football administrators failed woefully to work out modalities for the promotion and development of football, particularly the women’s. This is inspite of contributions the world football governing body, FIFA have been making to ensure that third world countries catch up with Asians, Europeans, South and the rest of America. It is possible that all the funds provided by FIFA for decades, intended for grassroots development of football for boys and girls-and by extension the youths, had been diverted to the national senior football team, the Lone Star.
If that is the case, Liberia has been putting the cart before the horse, instead of the other way around. Just like it is the horse that should pull or drive the cart, it is the very young male and female footballers who should provide players for future formidable senior national teams. It was the Lone Star U-20 team of late 90s that produced the likes of Kelvin Sebwe, Massa Jr, Oliver Makor and their colleagues, who years later formed the nucleus of the famous George Weah Eleven.
It was that George Weah led team that qualified Liberia for its first and second slots for Africa’s soccer showpiece…the African Nations Football Competition. What was done by football administrators then, is what should be done even better now, with now staggering FIFA funding, to take Liberian football to higher heights. And that is a more comprehensive and sustainable football development.
Kudos to the LFA for introducing the Districts of Monsterrado football competition and hats off to the woman who represents the interest of women’s football in Liberia. She insisted on the inclusion of the females in this pilot project and I understand her protest led to the postponement of the kick-off in the first place. But the first snag is that only few Districts had female soccer teams-no thanks to our football supremos, who have failed to introduce female football in Elementary Schools many years back and progressively to Junior ,Senior High Schools and to National Sports Meet. The Kickball played only in Liberia could not provide players for the female football teams in the on-going District Football competition, talkless of the countries’ female or women football club sides nor the national female teams.
Another snag in the ongoing District football tourney is the disqualification of the football players it should be meant for. For goodness sake, more than the National Sports Meet, the District games should go down to 3rd,4th division and even none-league footballers for the purpose of identifying future U-15,U-17 players-the pillars of future U-20,U-23 and Senior Lone Star in the male and female categories. Concentrating on 2nd and 1st division players who are past their prime, is a waste of time if we are serious about building a future youthful and winsome junior and senior male and female Lone Star teams.