By Ibrahim Karim Bangura (Tanko)

With the support of past and present governments, the national men’s teams, Leone Stars have been woefully performing in international qualifying campaigns over the years.

As a result, soccer fans at home and aboard have expressed total dismayed with the unfortunate performance of the national team.

Many may agree that the genesis of the whole problem regarding Leone stars’ weak performances started from the appointment of the team’s head coach and backroom staff.

The appointment of former Leone Stars coach, John Keister, was a nightmare due to his poor performance, after playing 27 matches with a narrow wins.

Recently, the appointments of his successor, Amidu Karim, as caretaker coach and his backroom staff was another crisis to the country because many saw it as a huge setback to the nation in terms of international standards followed by their appalling track records in their coaching careers.

According to views and opinions of football pundits, fans and onlookers say the selections of players for national duty is not by merit especially foreign based player in Europe, US, Australia etc, adding that 99% of Sierra Leonean players in overseas are playing at the non-division leagues, while other are playing conference leagues and are lacking exposure and experience.

They added that government is wasting taxpayers’ money on Leone Stars without seeing a positive result, noting that football is not only a sporting discipline despite its popularity in the country.

At present, there are 49 sporting disciplines in Sierra Leone and many are calling on government and donor parties to focus on other sporting activities.

Meanwhile, critics advice that the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) must overall the football academy in the country by working closely in partnership with physical health education departments in various schools across the country in a bid to tap good talents in the future.

Sierra Leone currently lacks football academies despite the huge promises made by successive governments and football authorities.