By Augustine Wesseh
The Technical Committee of the Liberia Football Association (LFA) headed its President, Mustapha Raji, is exploring every means possible to ensure the national men soccer team, the Lone Star, is fully managed under the guidance of a high profile professional coach. The LFA is looking find a coach, who will lead efforts in the restructuring and rebuilding of the team to compete with other national teams of other countries on the African continent.
Since the sacking of Coach Ansu Keitta on the December 29, 2023, the football authorities in the country has opened a file to receive applications from qualified individuals amongst which the LFA Technical Committee will do the verting as who is best suited to take over the coaching of Liberia National team – the Lone Star.
Since the facing out of the famous ‘Weah 11’ in 2002, the year Liberia made her second entry into the African Cup of Nation, Liberia has not made significant gains in football and has not progressed into any major competition in football.
The leadership of LFA, in collaboration with the Liberian government through the Ministry of Youth and Sports, under guardian of former Minister D Zeogar Wilson, in 2021 developed a special program that focused on youths under 12-years up to under 14-years. Coach Ansu Keitta was in charge of the youth program before he was given the opportunity to take over the national team.
However, it’s been claimed that over 600 coaches of international and national status are vying for the coaching opportunity for the Lone Star. Among the applicants is the former Coach of Zambia, Hervé Jean-Marie Roger Renard.
The former Zambia national team coach, with whom the Zambian National team won the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations edition, has to his credit of winning the African nations cup hosted in the Ivory Coast in 2015, making him the only coach to have won two African Nations Cup. He also coached Morocco at the 2018 World Cup and had a coaching time with Saudi Arabia.
