By Mikia Kalati
Most national teams will be playing international friendly matches in the coming weeks and as always it looks like there will be nothing for our beloved Likuena.
This is very worrying for me and of course the future of our national team if we indeed feel that the Leslie Notši’s side is finally ready to make a serious attempt to qualify for their first-ever Africa Cup of Nations tournament.
Some football gurus feel the team has matured a lot within the last six months. Likuena registered a rare away victory beating Sudan 3-1 in their last 2014 World cup qualifiers and they reached the semi-finals of the regional Cosafa Cup played in Zambia this July where they ended the tournament as the highest scoring team.
Well, it is very worrying that the Lesotho Football Association (Lefa) is doing nothing or very little to utilise the Fifa dates so as to get Likuena playing friendly matches on a regular basis.
The team has not played since their World Cup qualifier to Sudan in September while other countries have played a number of games and will be in action again in the coming weeks.
This has been a long standing problem for our team and one would feel that it should not be a problem for our team to get more friendly matches especially because the Lefa president is the vice president of the regional football body, Cosafa.
He has served in different structures of big football bodies over the years and it should not be a hustle for our team to get friendly matches.
I mean, our neighbours, South Africa have lined up friendly matches against Swaziland and world champs, Spain.
The team and our players would surely benefit a lot playing regular international football against quality opponents.
It is very sad that the only time that our team gets to play against quality opponents is during either the World Cup or the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers.
A player like Nkoto Masoabi of Lioli has been doing well since the season started. The dreadlocked striker has scored 11 goals in eight matches making him the hottest property in our league.
He has never tasted international football and I’m sure the Likuena technical team would be keen to test him at the highest level so that he gradually gets exposed to bigger and tougher challenges.
There are a lot of players in our league that have been on top of their game since the 2013/14 campaign started and they as well need to be tested at the highest stage minus the pressure that is characteristic of international qualifying games.
The likes of Linare’s Mabuti Potloane have shown glimpse of brilliance when given a chance to sport the national colours and this is the right time for them to be given more chances to adapt to international football. I’m therefore, making an appeal to the Lefa president and his band to pull up their socks otherwise Likuena will always be known as the whipping boys of African football if they do not take meaningful strides to improve the team. While we are happy that the team reached the Cosafa semi-finals and also beat Sudan, we want more from this team and we would be happy to see our beloved Likuena qualifying for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations.
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