Invest in sport

Lesotho’s senior national football team, Likuena, crashed out of the 2023 Africa Nations Cup qualifiers last weekend after a tame 2-0 defeat against Zambia in Dobsonville in South Africa.

The defeat came a few days after Likuena also lost 3-1 to the same opponents in Ndola.

The back-to-back defeats means Lesotho are bottom of Group H with just a single point, with no hope of making it to the Africa Nations Cup tournament in Cote d’Ivore next year.

For the record, Lesotho has never made it past the group stages of the Africa Cup tournament since independence in 1966.

With the defeat last weekend, that unwanted record continues.

But it was the tame manner in which Likuena surrendered in the heat of battle that has infuriated certain sections of this football-mad nation of 2 million people.

We can understand the fans’ anger. That is because football is an emotive sport.

The exit from the Africa Cup of Nations comes after what had appeared to be an improvement in the general performance of the national team. That is why last weekend’s defeat has been so painful to accept.

Yet in our post-mortem of Likuena’s performance, we must not lose sight of the bigger issues that continue to haunt our football and sport in general.

Every time Likuena loses, the team is often the subject of vicious ridicule by irate football fans. The players are not spared with the administrators at the Lesotho Football Association (LEFA) also being dragged into the mix.

We also fire coaches every time he fails to meet national expectations. That is why we have changed coaches every time they have failed to take us to “the Promised Land”.

That is understandable.

While the anger is raging, it would be a tragedy of immense proportions if we were to narrow this debate just to football. Such tunnel vision would be fatal.

The issues are much bigger than football and the government led by Prime Minister Sam Matekane will need to address these as a matter of urgency.

The truth of the matter is that Likuena’s under-performance is just a symptom of a greater malaise that has haunted Lesotho sport for decades.

Successive governments over the years have not ploughed enough resources into sport. Our sport has been a victim of massive neglect by the government. The budget allocation for sport has been shrinking for years.

As a result, Lesotho lacks the requisite infrastructure in the capital Maseru let alone in far-flung districts around the country. With no infrastructure, we have failed to develop sport at the grassroots level.

We have no serious junior football leagues around the country. Our tennis courts in Maseru are in a state of dilapidation. Our beloved Setsoto Stadium has been condemned by CAF as not good enough to host international matches.

That is why Likuena have to travel all the way to Dobsonville Stadium which they use as their base. That is a shame.

Athletics, where we used to do so well in the past, is in terminal decline. The last time Lesotho won a proper medal at the Olympics was almost two decades ago.

Faced with other competing needs, sport has been largely pushed to the periphery. That will need to be reversed if we are to salvage the little pride that we still have in our national sporting teams.

We would like to argue that sport can be a multi-million dollar industry if properly managed and with the right people driving it.