Football in its present international form reportedly inaugurated in England can be a recreation or a friendly kind of fight depending on the way you look at it. The human bid for superiority is ever present. There is always a will to win, but the way can be elusive. Each player acts well his part using every nerve and sinew where all the honour lies.
In our search for victory, we have hired foreign coaches from places like Ireland, Sweden and Ghana as if there was a dearth of local coaches. We were not casting our nets where we are. A local coach has done it, putting paid to dependence on foreign talent.
Has history repeated itself? So it seems. The same Julius Maada Bio, who was mainly responsible for Sierra Leone’s recent victory against many odds, including a last minute ban on players on grounds of COVID-19. Were they allowed there could have been more goals. But Sierra Leone needed victory not a draw or number of goals and it was done.
The fact is for the past 25 years there had been lip service motivation. Even “World Best, our local Messi,” failed to score any goal or to motivate the players causing same spectators to refer to him as a fake Messi. President Bio knows that ambition should be made of sterner stuff. It should be dogged. He refused to be distracted by any faux pas. That is what positive leadership means.
We experienced it when Maxwell Khobe led the victorious forces of ECOMOG along the main streets of Freetown. Leading from behind and empty rhetoric would not prevail. We have heard how Sir Winston Churchill of Britain led the country by victory by sheer oratory. That was his method that succeeded. Our own Winston Churchill motivates by his presence and keeping to his talk and do. He is a man of words and deeds. Previous SLPP and APPC governments were not motivated enough. Too weak to fight.
Aside from those who call football a recreation and not a friendly fight, there are other forms of sportsmanship which need equal focus and motivation. When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport, but when a tiger wants to murder him, he calls it ferocity.
Football has become a do-or-die game. In any case President Bio ought not to limit his motivation to football alone. There are other sports like cricket that, in earlier years in this country, were national pastimes. There are others like basketball, volley ball and boxing, etc., that deserve attention if not equal.
While some of us are gloating about the determination and magnanimity of President Bio and/or the Paopa government, others who are not so sentimental would be wondering where the billions of Leones came from that are being forked out to Leone Stars. If the money came from the pocket of President it gives more feathers to his cap so that he could fly around the globe in search of investors. But if it is out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund it should draw the attention of the Auditor- General.
SIDE EFFECTS
Football does not add to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of any nation. It adds to prestige and what does prestige do to the uplifting of the standards of the majority of our people who live below the poverty line of $1 a day? This is in contra-distinction from developed countries, which can afford such luxuries with affluence. Our Leone Stars are to be salaried on and off season though their clubs are also expected to give them stipends.
The disincentive factor vis-a-vis focus on education should be kept in view. Fickle minded students may now concentrate on becoming Messi or Ronaldo, albeit in vain, instead of concentrating on their studies that would benefit the nation and not themselves alone.
Parents and guardians should now dissuade their children and wards from paying disproportionate attention to football. This is not to say that there should be all work and no play. It is about striking a balance. Natural skills cannot be forced, try as anyone might. Talents can be inborn.
President Bio and his cohorts have not achieved victory through luck. It is through careful orchestration. If Leone Stars win the African Cup it is not unthinkable for the great motivator to provide lands, furnished houses and vehicles for them if the funding is right. So President Bio should prod the S.L.F.A. with the rod of Paopa!