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T is now as clear as a goat’s behind that when it comes to our senior national football team we are perpetual failures.
On Sunday Likuena crashed out of the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers after a draw with São Tomé and Príncipe, a little known country with a population of 176 000.
To understand why that loss is scandalous you have to remember that São Tomé and Príncipe had not participated in the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers for eight years before they played Lesotho and they are ranked position 196 on the Fifa rankings.
Lesotho is ranked 153.
You would expect that after such an embarrassing result the Lesotho Football Association (Lefa) would have an emergency indaba to understand what went wrong.
You would expect Lefa president Salemane Phafane and his crowd to appear on our national TV with sullen faces and profusely apologise to the nation.
But this is Lesotho football and things don’t work that way.
Mediocrity, it would seem, is not something that brings shame in our football.
Failure has long ceased to bother our football administrators.
They have become so used to losing that winning is no longer an incentive.
In fact anyone who demands better results for Likuena is accused of going against the grain . . . of losing.
It would seem that we the fans are the only ones who care about winning.
For Phafane and his battalion life goes on whether we win or lose.
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crutator has no iota of doubt that what’s killing our football is lack of vision and competence in the leadership.
We have lacked this vision for the past 46 years.
Year after year we have watched helplessly as our national team stumbles from one embarrassing defeat to another.
Under Phafane, his squad of appeasers and other rent seeking officials at Lefa, our football has become a joke that has long ceased to be funny.
The league is nothing but a congregation of boozers’ clubs run from bedrooms and briefcases.
The stadia, if at all they deserve to be called that, are nothing but cassava fields.
Security at the matches is so lax that fans mumble prayers before they go to matches.
Nothing works in our football.
Hooligans and drunkards have hijacked our football while Phafane and his army of brownnosers stand arms akimbo. Referees are either inept, defiantly biased or both. Oh, did I forget to mention that some of them are overweight.
The administrators are clearly out of their depth, blinkered or blindfolded.
Phafane and his praise singers are groping in the dark, hoping one day they will see the light.
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t is a mega scandal that 46 years after independence Lesotho’s senior national football team is still to qualify for either the Africa Cup of Nations or the World Cup.
Thanks to Lefa’s indolence and bungling Basotho find solace in supporting other African teams because Likuena just cannot qualify for the continental football competition.
When the soccer World Cup comes Basotho are busy ululating for countries they can’t even locate on the map.
What will it take for Phafane and his legion of bootlickers to admit failure and leave our football alone?
When will they even get enough of this failure? Are their tummies not already full of failures?
As a write Botswana, a country with a smaller population than Lesotho, is currently playing at the Africa Cup of Nations tournament after qualifying with a splendid record.
In a few years Botswana has transformed its national team from being the miserable whipping boys of African football to a credible competitor.
They have shown what proper management and long-term planning can do to football.
But you can be sure that Lefa’s leaders will never ask the Botswana Football Association how they turned around their fortunes because they are adamant in their bad ways.
The only time Lefa is startled from its deep slumber is when it comes to meting out instant justice to teams.
If there is anything that Lefa does well it is to come down hard on our football teams like a tonne of bricks. They will not hesitate to hit teams with hefty fines.
If you want to send them back to dreamland just ask them about the pathetic state of our football grounds and the failure of our senior national team.
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t pains Scrutator that of the 15 countries in the Sadc region Lesotho is one of only four countries that have never made it to the Africa Cup of Nations.
The other teams are Madagascar, Seychelles and Swaziland.
How we have remained a permanent member of this club of failures is not clear.
How, for the life of me, can we be in the same league as Swaziland, a country run by a man who clearly cannot make a distinction between his personal bank account and the national treasury?
Eish!
As for Madagascar and Seychelles, well, they are just bad at football.
Yet Lesotho is still keeping them company on the fringes of international football.
The truth of the matter is that we wouldn’t be such a pathetic football nation if we didn’t have jokers as football administrators.
Our football managers have neither the zeal nor the plan to succeed.
Look at how they bungled the trip to São Tomé and Príncipe.
Look how they have failed to develop soccer at grassroots level.
Look at how they have failed to attract more sponsors to the game.
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crutator was just about to finish shouting at the big men of our football when news reached her that Lefa’s top management is going to have a meeting tomorrow ostensibly to map the way forward.
That is so ridiculous coming from a bunch of men who should have announced their resignations en masse minutes after Sunday’s final whistle.
Phew!
Scrutator believes that in that meeting tomorrow the Lefa management will not be “mapping the way forward” but cobbling up a nefarious scheme to cover their exposed backsides.
They have been exposed for what they are and are now planning to discuss how they can cling on to their positions until another failure comes their way.
This girl from Qacha has no power to force Lefa’s leadership to leave office but she will continue to shout until they listen.
So here is the shout for this week: Phafane and your troops I plead with you in the name of Jesus to GO!
Come Sunday this matter will be on top of Scrutator’s prayer agenda.
Phafane and his cahoots need all the prayers they can get.
Khele!
