Published by the government of Zimbabwe
6 September 2008
Harare — GEORGE WEAH almost became the president of Liberia - something that would have completed a stunning transformation for a boy who grew up in poverty in a slum called Clara Town in a poor district of Monrovia.
His popularity stemmed largely from a lifetime spent playing football in Europe where he became the face of his nation -- a beacon of hope -- during a difficult period when Liberia was being torn apart by a bloody civil war.
Weah is widely recognised as the finest African football star of all-time.
After all, he is the only African player to win the Fifa World Footballer of the Year Award, the only one from our continent to be crowned European Footballer of the Year and the one whom football writers chose the African Footballer of the Century.
He was voted African Footballer of the Year three times -- '89, '94 and '95 -- and he was at the peak of his powers in '95 when he led Italian giants AC Milan to the championship and then won both the European and World Footballer of the Year awards in the same year.
To Liberians, in particular, and Africans, in general, George Weah was a football icon -- an inspirational figure who rose from the bowels of poverty to become, by the middle of the '90s, the best football player in the world.
Weah became a symbol of the African Dream, an athlete who showed all of us that God's gift could come to anyone - including a poor boy growing up in Clara Town - and he could use that talent to smash all the barriers and get to be recognised as the best in the world.
George Weah also had a passion for his country, to make the dreams of millions of his fellow Liberians come true, and he knew that no sporting discipline back here in Africa could make all that possible better than football.
So he battled hard to build a competitive national football team back home in Liberia, funded its preparations, funded its hotel accommodation, funded its kit, funded its travel expenses, funded its bonuses and allowances, and funded virtually everything related to the team.
In 1996, the Liberians qualified for the Nations Cup finals in South Africa -- their first appearance at the showcase -- and in the battle for a place at the 2002 World Cup finals in Japan and Korea, they came within just a point of making it.
George Weah's commitment to the cause of his fatherland was unquestionable and he made a lot of sacrifices to try to take the Liberian football team to great heights and made such a huge impact the team won the support of a number of neutrals both on the continent and in the world.
Weah's story is not unique on the African continent.
Only this week, Sierra Leone, a diamond-rich African country, announced that its captain Mohamed Kallon had provided US$40 000 of his own money to help the national team prepare for today's World Cup and Nations Cup qualifier against Equatorial Guinea.
On Monday, the team's coach Ahmed Kanu revealed that his boys had not received any financial support for today's game and this led Kallon, who now plays in the United Arab Emirates after stints in France and Italy, to bail out the team using his own financial resources.
Kallon is not one of the richest football players on the continent but he has a passion for his country and he has helped the national team, in the past, by injecting his own money to cater for hotel bills and other training expenses.
He said he does not want to be refunded that money.
Cue in the Warriors
While Kallon was withdrawing a fortune from his bank to bankroll his national team's preparations for today's World Cup/Nations Cup qualifier, something dramatic was happening here in Harare.
On Wednesday, the Warriors refused to leave their hotel rooms in protest over what they claim are unpaid appearance fees and bonuses for two home matches in this qualifying campaign against Kenya and Namibia.
The Warriors boycotted their training session, set for Rufaro that same day, and vowed to continue with their industrial action until their demands had been met and Zifa had settled the outstanding amounts.
It's easy to sympathise with the Warriors.
After all, like all professional people, they need to be paid for their services.
After all, they are not playing in search of glory for their families but in search of the glory of our fatherland.
After all, they risk a lot to come and play for their fatherland and a career-ending injury, while on national duty, could spell the end of the good times.
After all, they risk a lot, flying up and down the continent, all in the name of fighting for our dear fatherland.
After all, they were promised the money and the other party should meet their side of the bargain.
After all, they are our Warriors -- the only team that belongs to us, the international public face of our football, the only team that we are all able to support publicly, including journalists, without being accused of bias.
After all, they are our boys -- the only team that unites the entire nation, whose success is everyone's glory, whose defeat is everyone's nightmare.
So the events at the Cresta Lodge on Wednesday, when the Warriors chose not to get onto the team bus for their training session at Rufaro, were a sad indictment on the administration of our football.
It took us back into the past -- those grey days when our national team became a theatre of protests, those days when the players kept fighting against the association, those days when we lost golden chances to make it to the Nations Cup finals because of the in-house fighting.
Those days when the conflict between the association and the team was so deep-rooted that the late Reinhard Fabisch even threatened to stop all foreign-based players from coming home if Zifa did not reinstate the then team doctor Vic Naik -- suspended allegedly for failing to honour a small debt.
Zifa and the Rebellion
It's easy to blame Zifa for the rebellion in our national team camp this week.
It doesn't matter whether the players are right or wrong. The mere fact that an impasse over appearance fees and bonuses turned into a rebellion is a sad reflection of how the association managed this case.
Management is about handling such a crisis and ensuring that it does not turn into a rebellion where our national team players, whether they were wrong or right, end up boycotting a crucial training session.
Management is about finding a solution, even if the money is not yet there, to ensure that whatever the problem it does not snowball into a crisis that will result in the boys boycotting training.
Management is about taking care of such tricky issues, finding a diplomatic way of resolving the problem without it exploding into the sort of crisis that we saw this week in which the Warriors eventually lost a full day of training.
Management is about diplomacy, about giving the players a reason to believe -- even in the worst case scenario when the money is not there -- and making them remain focused on the job at hand even when, deep down in their hearts, they have a number of problems with the system.
Management is about understanding the general nature of footballers, the reality that they can explode any time, the reality that they don't see issues the way we do, the reality that they believe that a capacity crowd at Rufaro merely translates into millions of dollars into the Zifa account.
The reality that they care very little about the percentage that goes to the Harare City Council, the reality that they care very little about what goes to the police, the reality that they care very little about what goes to the Sports Commission, the reality that they care very little about the little cake that remains that finally goes into the Zifa account.
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