By: Alusine Rehme Wilson
Covering the crucial match day-5 TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations encounter between Sierra Leone and Nigeria at the host’s new found home venue SKD Stadium in Monrovia, my camera lenses spotted a somewhat empty stadium.
Except for the presidential stand and a few cover stands that were encouragingly occupied, all the other stands in the stadium were either relatively empty and a few had a countable size of spectators.
It was the many empty stands at the stadium that motivated me to interview some fans of the host nation, Sierra Leone - a country believed to be playing its home games previously in front of thousands of supporters at the Siaka Steven Stadium in Freetown, about what it means playing away from home?
Lamin Sheriff, who said he was visiting Monrovia for the first time, said he was there from Kenema where he had lived for 34 years since he was born said supporting Leone Stars in the last three years has help him “to travel to different places outside my home town including Freetown, Guinea and now Liberia, to cheer up my national team players.”
On the empty stadium, Sheriff said “no nation would like to play such a crucial match like ours with Nigeria away from home, but the match outcome I believe, is sending a message that its high sports infrastructure be prioritized.”
Aminah Kallon said she was being given a free ride by her college mates who even bought her a cover stand ticket to watch her first ever senior national men’s football team international match live. “I feel truly impressed to be accorded the opportunity to watch my countrymen play live. but I wished this feeling would have been experienced back home where I’m certain we would have supported and celebrated our national team players the most, and losing the match to the Nigerians as it happened in Monrovia would have been impossible,” she claimed.
Joseph Pratt from Freetown like many other supporters interviewed, blamed the Leone Stars coach John Edward Keister for the team’s late bowing to Nigeria at the expense of his inability to effect timely changes in the match, “such negligence displayed by our coach would only happen here, never back home, this is why I’m indeed pained by this result especially that our nation lost the game embarrassingly at extra time,” Pratt told Awoko Newspaper along the main gate of the Liberian SKD stadium.
To know how much it had cost Sierra Leone as a nation to host the said match at the SKD Stadium in neighbouring Liberia, Awoko Newspaper did reach out to officials of the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) and the National Sports Authority (NSA) after the match on in Monrovia on Sunday but the officials did not provide the actual cost.
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