MASERU — Lefa technical director Seephephe Matete says Lesotho’s national team will continue to perform dismally unless something is done to improve the domestic league.
In an interview with the Lesotho Times on Tuesday, Matete bemoaned the level of football which has seen Likuena fall to position 160 out of 207 countries on the latest Fifa rankings.
“It is impossible for Likuena to perform better with the current state of the premier league,” Matete said.
“We must all understand that we are working towards the improvement of Likuena and if the current standard of football in this new season is anything to go by, it will be impossible for Likuena to perform well.”
The former Likuena mentor said he had so far watched two premier league matches in the new season and both “were not up to scratch”.
“I watched matches between Lioli and Linare and Mpharane Celtics against Matlama. Both were very poor,” he said.
With the current state of football in the premier league, Lesotho should not expect miracles on the international stage, he said.
He said this is “because the standard of football in the league is well portrayed in the national team”.
Matete said current premier league players lacked a hunger to succeed.
“For example, if a player’s ability is 60 percent, we normally get only 20 percent while in reality we are supposed to get the maximum out of a player for our standard of football to improve,” he said.
He added that Lefa was looking at ways of addressing this problem by enforcing Confederation of African Football (Caf) rules that all premier league and A Division coaches must hold coaching qualifications.
“Training coaches is part of our initiatives to ensure that the standard of football in the country is improved.
“We are going to train 40 of them next month. Through the office of technical director, we are going to meet as coaches and evaluate our work, possible before December,” he said.
He said Lefa was going to conduct a training course for 40 local coaches for the C-Licence coaching qualification.
Lefa suspended Likuena from all international competitions in 2009 following a spate of poor results.
The team’s first official international encounter since the long break will be in November when it takes on Burundi in a 2014 Fifa World Cup qualifying tie.
Lesotho has never qualified for any major football competition such as the African Nations Cup and the World Cup.
