Mikia Kalati
OUR senior national football team began their COSAFA Cup campaign with a massive quarterfinal win over Namibia in Rustenburg, South Africa to book their place in yesterday’s semi-final.
Yes it was a win achieved in the penalty shootout but it was a massive victory all the same because Likuena knocked out a team who won the regional competition as recently as 2015.
In contrast, Likuena have never won it and their best performance was reaching the final where they lost to yesterday’s semi-final opponents Zimbabwe back in 2000.
Since then, Lesotho have struggled to reach the semi-finals. They last achieved the feat when the tournament was held in Zambia in 2013 only to fall to Zimbabwe.
And while Likuena has been on the roll in recent matches, the same cannot be said of the Lesotho Football Association (LeFA) who are not doing enough to promote and mobilise support for the team.
Premier league clubs have actually done more than LeFA to attract big companies to come on board and invest in them.
The small group of supporters who turned up to give Likuena morale support against Namibia had to dig deep into their pockets to do so.
These supporters deserve to be applauded like their colleagues who recently hosted an awards ceremony where Bantu’s Hlompho Kalake was handed M5000 after being voted last season’s best player.
It shows that supporters are not happy with the inadequate rewards our players are getting for entertaining us and doing the nation proud.
The feeling in the football fraternity is that the initiative of bussing supporters to international matches should be undertaken by LeFA as the mother body.
After all, Rustenburg is only five hours’ drive from Lesotho and LeFA should have led by example in mobilising support for the team.
If the Namibia were able to send two busloads of supporters, surely our own association could have done the same if not much more.
LeFA must play a leading role and show that they have confidence in the team by mobilising support especially when they are playing close to home.
It is only when they play their part that the corporate world will also show a big interest in the team.
And having the corporate world on board would go a long way in ending the perennial squabbles over allowances between the association and the players.
The players are doing their part by grinding results and for that, they deserve to be properly remunerated.
LeFA could have at least attempted to engage government and given Prime Minister, Thomas Thabane’s pledge to support sport, I do not think government would have refused to avail a few buses to ferry fans to Rustenburg.
Pull-up your socks LeFA, you cannot survive in modern football without clear marketing strategies.
