Panic in Liberia over clash with Eagles

.As FA keeps mum on plans, sends advance team

Liberia FA president, Musa Bility

A sense of great fear has pervaded the Liberian atmosphere ahead of the Lone Stars’ clash with the Super Eagles of Nigeria in the second-leg of the 2013 African Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifier on October 13, we can authoritatively report.

Our correspondent gathered that soccer fans in the West African country are greatly worried that their national squad might be humiliated and kicked out of the race for the ticket to South Africa next year when it visits Calabar, Cross River State. All efforts by the technical crew and the Liberia Football Association (LFA) to assure them otherwise have yielded little result.

The Liberia FA however further made the situation worse by keeping sealed lips over its plans for the game. LFA boss, Musa Bility and the deputy chairperson of the Lone Star mobilization for its qualification to the 2013 African Cup of Nations, Senator Geraldine Doe-Sherif, came out of a meeting at the weekend refusing to reveal much about how the Lone Stars will go about the clash with the Eagles.

Doe-Sherif was described by local sources in Liberia as refusing to speak openly on the matter. She however did disclose that the plans for the game include sending an advance team to Calabar to monitor what was on ground.

The arrival date of the advance team, those to make up the team and its numerical strength was not revealed by Doe-Sherif or Bility.

Local analysts in Liberia have gone to town preaching doom for the team because of the circumstances surrounding the plans for the game that is just about three weeks away.

A respected football analyst in Liberia called Wleh Bedell has stated categorically that the Super Eagles is desperate and thus makes a formidable team whose home (Calabar) would be ‘a difficult hunting ground’ at which a victory for the Lone Stars would be “similarly impossible.”    

“We all like the assembly of hope for the Lone Star, but either Calabar or Abuja is a difficult hunting ground and coupled of Liberia being a poor traveler- we should not ignore the facts,” Bedell told a forum at the Stanton Peabody Conference Hall of the Press Union of Liberia on Clay Street, Monrovia.

The Eagles will take on the Liberians in Calabar and Coach Stephen Keshi has promised to do all within his power to ensure the team is victorious.