By Sayoh Kamara
In the days leading up to the preliminary round of the CAF Confederation Cup in which Sierra Leone’s representatives, East End Lions and Bo Rangers Football Clubs showed abysmal performances, the country’s Football Maestro, Mohamed Kallon took to social media to highlight a critical flaw in how we play the game in the country, pointing out in clear terms the need for the development of a country-owned football manual and methodologies.
As a former amateur player myself for schools and community, and a follower of contemporary football, this has never occurred to me; to develop a standardized playing skill and method that which a country’s teams can be related and associated.
In my years of playing football at that lower amateur level, yes, I had coaches who will drill us during trainings to keep us fit and ensuring for a full minute minutes of play. This was with the understanding that at full time, the game would have been won or whatever. Intermittently, the coaches will drill us for extra time and then train for free kicks and penalty shots.
Trust, these were done from the perspective of the coach and the rest was self-adduced and when luck strikes, the player gets the heroic praise and the coach commended for putting a good team together.
That was what football was in Africa in the years prior to the introduction of professional football popularized by satellite television streaming and royalties. The game has indeed improved and made much more civilized due to the introduction of tougher guidelines that are removing the game from its old style robotics play that required strength and muscles to skill and agility.
In Africa over the decades, some former players transitioned into being coaches and their applications have improved considerably over time such that we see African football teams making impressive performances at the continental and world stages. Yes, that is football for today.
Thanks to the Confederation if African Football (CAF) in association with the Federation International for Football Associations (FIFA), for the introduction of training schemes for African wannabe coaches going through rigorous trainings on the methodology of the game to ensure fair play.
I am certain that what has come out from Mohamed Kallon now wouldn’t have in spite of his years of playing in Lebanon, France and Italy and given his exposure with the National Team, Leone Stars in South Africa, had he not had a refine from his coaching course in the United States.
In Cameroon during the AfCON 2022, he had to put his integrity on the line with Coach Keister, to fill in Mohamed Noah Kamara aka Musa Tombo against the Elephants of La Cote d’Ivoire in which Musa Tombo was quite exemplary.
That must have come from Kallon’s study of the previous match against Algeria. It must have come from his study of the way of playing that had been psyched in the players, noticing thereof that the team needed a striker who has the physique and the agility to destabilize the opposing defense and indeed, Musa Tombo did prove Kallon right with that his dramatic turn-and-kick after he had cleverly out maneuvered Denise Bailey of England’s Premier League Team, Arsenal.
At Limbe in North-east Cameroon where the Leone Stars went for the final qualifying match against Equatorial Guinea amidst total support from our creole speaking cousins, it was all just limited to what the players could offer individually, not what Coach Keister trained. He failed to read the game and enforce it on the players to apply. The free kick the Guineans took advantage of was a clear demonstration of the need for what Kallon is now calling for, a home-grown football manual and a methodology that can define our ways and style of football.
At Limbe and on the pitch when the free kick was granted to the Guineans, even as an old time player, I could see the match being read and interpreted on the ground by the Equatorial Guineans with the Captain taking centre stage, directing movements in a labyrinth fashion with our players standing as dummies and Coach Keister virtually sleeping on the sidelines. At the Media Stand from where we had a vintage point, we shouted to the hearing of Coach Keister to replicate the movements of the Guineans by man-marking their opponents but to no avail.
The manner that equalizer came, that sent us parking was poignant and debilitating. It could have been prevented and that would have been Sierra Leone’s curtain raiser into actual continental football as competitors.
Our footballers are only used to playing the game but they are not winners of the game. One stressful characteristic of our players especially in the national team is their inability to score goals and secure those goals. Also, it is their character to play tough for the first 25 minutes and maximum, th first 45 minutes. They are also susceptible the loss at the dying times of play. Those comebacks against Nigeria in the qualifiers and at the AfCON in Cameroon were sheer lucky comebacks. Our system of play does not show for those impossible outcomes.
I have brought these scenarios to concur with the Maestro, Mohamed Kallon. Sierra Leone needs to indulge in this scheme right now, to educate our players at all levels on football and how it can be played to get desired results. As we watch Premier League and its top-tier teams play, you can tell when a goal is coming. This is because, the Coaches teach the players the arithmetic of the game and the philosophy of it. It is not just about kicking the ball and dribbling around the pitch. It is also about making it entertaining with an expectant positive result.
The Orange boys of the Dutch National Football Team are truly entertaining and results oriented. In Holland, it was Ajax in the glory days of Coach, Louis Van Gaal when African players like Nwanko Kanu and Finidi George were incorporated into that reading style of playing football and when they teamed up at the Super Eagles, it was an explosion.
This is time for the Sierra Leone Football Association and the National Sports Council to engage with Kallon to carve out a football strategy for Sierra Leone that will enable us play the game at continental and global football as competitors not ordinary participants. Perhaps, with the technicalities this Kallon initiative will add to the personal skills of our individual players, we would be able to build and develop a team that would in progressive succession can participate and compete in the game of football, a game that honestly brings us together and puts smiles on our faces.