S. Siapha Mulbah
Following a public outcry on the reported disappointing performance of the Liberia men’s senior national team in the return leg of their double header with Djibouti, head coach, Mario Marinica, has described it as a personal opinion that the team underperformed under his watch as the team manager.
Thousands of fans that trooped in at the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex on Tuesday March 26, 2024 to cheer the national team, left the city of Paynesville wearing on their faces expressions that depicted heavy disappointment in the team’s performance, despite qualifying.
Some were heard complaining that the coach has no idea on the capacity of the players in the team, noting that it was not necessary to have some players playing the full game because there was no more energy in them after the first half.
Micheal R. Toe, a resident of Paynesville, who entered the field as a beneficiary of the free-gate intervention made by the Chief Patron Sports, Joseph Boakai, explained that he regretted going to the stadium to watch such a team that could not use history to rewrite the future progress of the game.
Toe said though he entered the stadium free, his time and energy wasted for the nearly two hours the game lasted for, were not justified nor defended by the team, which has to do with the full squad and the management of the Lone Star.
He intimated that the team invited by coach Mario for the two legs of the preliminary qualifiers does not have the quality and attributes needed to have a country participating in the main events of the African Cup of Nations.
He advised the Liberia football Association to acquaint the team’s head coach with the ideas of the Liberia football culture and avoid taking the squad against Djibouti to the 2025 Africa cup of Nations qualifiers.
“Less than 10 years ago, we had an impressive double leg victory against those boys from Djibouti as a team. These are young and new players that now have the opportunity to represent our country, but they all failed to remember that they were placed on that field to represent the over five million people that are here, that’s why they wasted all the chances and scored zero in every aspect of the game. The coach, the players, and the LFA, along with the Sports Ministry, need to redefine our football philosophy,” Toe argued.
Others in doubt explained during sideline conversations that the Liberian team is not strong enough to produce the needed result from the upcoming Nations Cup group stage.
Decontee Varplah spoke to this paper at the sports complex, explaining that Liberians do not deserve what she called the unsatisfactory treatment that the Lone Star continues to put out, despite growing support they got in recent time from the government of Liberia and other institutions that thought to promote sports through new partnership ideas.
As passionate as they appeared, she explained that Djibouti is not a recognized football country that should dominate the both legs of their qualifier fixtures against the Lone Star.
According to her, the game result only proved to the country that there is a lot of work to do in sports development if the citizens are to ever break their silence of celebrating with the country’s flag on the international stage.
“This is not a game that we should be witnessing from the Lone Star at this time when nearly all sides have deemed it necessary to put in some form of support to them. It only means that Liberia has gone nowhere in terms of football development, because a team that will fail to control Djibouti in a match will have to fight at the grace of God’s glory to get a qualifying space against other bigger countries at the Nations Cup,” she stated.
In the midst of these concerns raised by Liberians that closely followed the two first competitive matches of the national team under the watch of the Romanian gaffer, it has been observed that Coach Mario felt contented with the output of his boys as he termed the outcry of poor performance of the team as a personal opinion of those that felt disappointed in the team.
Addressing a post-match conference, the coach responded to the situation after his attention was called to it by journalists. He noted that, to his belief, Liberians are to be grateful that they are back to the Nations Cup qualifiers, rather than expressing mixed feeling in how the team to achieving such feat.
He averred that it is important to promote the players and congratulate them for the fight they had against Djibouti with more confidence in them, because they are going to make future prospects that will change the dynamics of national team football for Liberia.
