Mikia Kalati
The Lesotho Football Association (Lefa) last week called a media briefing to tell Basotho that it is broke and could be withdrawing the national team, Likuena, from the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.
The football-governing body claims it’s owed M3.6 million by the Ministry of Gender and Youth, Sports and Recreation, hence the bankruptcy.
Well, I don’t want to dwell that much on this debt, but just feel Lefa officials have become cry-babies, who are not prepared to sweat to make sure our teams have the necessary resources to compete against other countries.
I mean, a team like Bantu has been doing so well financially due to sound planning, which includes organising events such as gala-dinners to raise funds.
So why can’t Lefa also host its own events to raise money that can sustain the organisation through times like this?
Last season, Bantu’s gala-dinner was sold out and raised over half a million maloti. Apart from that, Bantu managed to bring South Africa’s first-choice goalkeeper, Itumeleng Khune, to their gala-dinner and surely that came at a prize considering that he has become a big brand not only in South Africa, but across the southern African region.
The whole idea of bringing Khune to their event was to boost the turnout, as the goalkeeper has a big following here in Lesotho.
So is Lefa really serious about running football? What are they doing to raise funds? I think they have realised that companies are reluctant to join forces with them because there must be something that our football governing body has continued to do wrong.
It is already a concern for me that our A Division streams have continued to struggle to attract funding and the two leagues are now in their third season without a main sponsor, yet a lot of companies are bankrolling Premier League teams such as Bantu, LCS and Lioli.
It will really be a shame if Likuena fail to partake in the group stage-matches of the qualifiers when Seephephe ‘Mochini’ Matete and his charges did so well to eliminate Liberia and Kenya to get there.
It is also a shame that some men can go around proudly calling themselves executive committee members of Lefa, yet they cannot do anything to see that football is growing in our country.
And for as long as we have this kind of selfish leadership, nothing will change as far as getting sponsorship for football at national level, is concerned.
We, as a country, need to have trust in our political leaders and the same goes for people at the helm of Lefa because their responsibility is equally critical for the wellbeing of our country. This is because football is no longer a mere game, but a source of livelihood for both players and officials, and of-course support sectors such as public transport and hospitality, which thrive when the sport is in a healthy state.
We all know that our team worked hard to get where it is today and under any circumstances you would expect companies to be coming on board in big numbers, yet this is not the case.
And this should be a clear sign that something is terribly wrong with our administration of the game.
