Coaching feud adds to Sierra Leone’s worries

Ninety minutes before kickoff Saturday, the national soccer team from Sierra Leone needed two things urgently: a coach and a bus to the stadium.

Already, the Leone Stars had been forced to play every match on the road because of an Ebola outbreak at home. Now, they were subjected to a different malady, this one political, not medical.

Government meddling happens regularly in international soccer, and FIFA is forever issuing yellow-card warnings and red-card suspensions for interference. National teams including Greece, Nigeria, Kuwait, Brunei, Peru, Cameroon, Iran and Iraq have all been barred at some point from international competition.

Seldom, though, does the interference take place as publicly and self-destructively as it did last week, when FIFA sent a letter threatening to make Sierra Leone sit in the corner and take a timeout.

Sierra Leone’s sports ministry had fought its soccer federation for years over control of the national team. On Saturday morning, both sides remained adamant as Sierra Leone prepared to host Cameroon in a designated “home” qualifier for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations tournament. Even Sierra Leone’s president appeared to get involved in the choosing of a coach.

For a time, it was unclear whether Saturday’s match would be played or forfeited. Sierra Leone was last in its group. It needed a tie and a win in two games in Cameroon — the teams were scheduled to meet again Wednesday — to have any real chance of reaching the Cup of Nations, the continental championship that will be played in Morocco in January. Even if the match was played, disaster seemed a certain outcome for the Leone Stars.

The sports ministry and soccer federation sent separate coaches to Cameroon. Internal charges and countercharges of corruption and conspiracy — nearly all of them unsubstantiated — soured the mood before the match. At one point, a legal consultant to the sports ministry accused the soccer federation of preparing to throw the game in return for a $50,000 payment from Cameroon’s federation.

The lobby and dining room of the team hotel grew tense. Fingers were pointed, voices raised.

“Maybe they’ll settle it W.W.E. style,” Johnny McKinstry of Northern Ireland, who was fired as Sierra Leone’s coach last month, said in a telephone interview.

Players responded with a mix of disgust, resignation and acquired calm. “It’s madness,” defender Mustapha Dumbuya said.

Privately, some players said they wanted to leave and return to their club teams. But others seemed unbothered, sitting in the hotel lobby in the hours before the game, listening to music, texting on smartphones, waiting for a bus that never seemed to arrive.

“It’s a normal routine in Sierra Leone football,” goalkeeper Solomon Zombo Morris said.

At least he would go to the stadium if the bus arrived. Three journalists from Sierra Leone and two officials from the sports ministry were restricted to the hotel because they had not been included on the team’s official travel list. The reasons were not clear. House arrest, they called it. This much was certain: They had traveled 1,500 miles but would have to watch the game on television.

“It’s not possible to have a home match for Sierra Leone without Sierra Leone journalists there to cover it,” said one of the reporters, Mohamed Fajah Barrie, who is president of the country’s sportswriters association.

Christian Dauda, the national team’s general manager, walked through the lobby, his cellphone to his ear. He kept saying, “Excellency.”

Later, Dauda said that he was speaking to the personal assistant of Ernest Bai Koroma, the president of Sierra Leone. Koroma wanted the game canceled unless the two sports ministry officials were allowed to leave the team hotel and the ministry’s coach was allowed to sit on the bench, Dauda said. Otherwise, if the players participated in the match, they would not be paid.

“It went all the way to the top,” Dauda said. But officials in the soccer federation were suspicious. They thought it unlikely that Koroma would divert his attention from the Ebola crisis to worry about a soccer coach.

Even Atto Mensah, the coach appointed by the sports ministry, called the situation “ridiculous.”

“Imagine if American football called Obama to get involved,” Mensah said. The soccer federation considered Mensah unqualified as a coach and designated its own manager, John Agina Sesay, to sit on the bench. Under international rules, the federation had the right to run the national team. But the sports ministry controlled its finances. As kickoff approached, neither the referees nor the bus company had been paid.

“The driver refused to show up,” said Abu Bakarr Kamara, a spokesman for the soccer federation.

A call was placed to Cameroon’s soccer federation, which sent one of its buses. Crammed inside, the Leone Stars followed a police escort to the stadium, arriving little more than an hour before kickoff.

By then, the players had come to their own decision. They wanted neither coach on the bench. Instead, they wanted to play for John Jeboh Sherrington, the technical director of the soccer federation. Graciously, Mensah stepped aside. “Better to save what you have than to destroy,” Mensah said.

Sesay, though, went to the bench during warm-ups and refused to leave. More heated discussion followed. A rumor spread that the game would be canceled.

Fifteen minutes before kickoff, Sherrington spoke to the team in the dressing room. Forget about the infighting, he admonished the players. Put the country first.

“Think of Sierra Leone,” Sherrington said.

Pooling their own money, soccer federation officials said, they paid the referees. And they guaranteed that the players would be paid. At the last minute, the infighting stopped and the game began.

“Maybe we will use this as motivation,” John Trye, a reserve goalkeeper, said on the bench.

Maybe he was right. The Leone Stars absorbed early pressure from Cameroon. Umaru Bangura, a central defender and Sierra Leone’s captain, cleared a shot off the goal line. The game began to change.

In the 40th minute, forward Alhassan Kamara pinged a shot off the left post. Defensively, Sierra Leone remained impenetrable. The game ended scoreless, but in light of the Ebola crisis at home and the internal feuding here, the Leone Stars celebrated the result as a victory.

In the dressing room, officials who had been skirmishing earlier now laughed and shook hands and posed for photographs.

“Given everything we’ve been through,” midfielder Khalifa Jabbie said, “the people in Sierra Leone will be proud of us and proud of themselves.”