The Executive of the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) has appointed Umar Bah as Team Manager of the home-based Leone Stars. His appointment on the 24th of June this year could herald the dawn of an era of progression for our raw talents.
Bah’s growing pedigree in football management has attracted greater attention after his pivotal role in the reawakening of sleeping giants, Real Republicans Football Club, one of the most glamorous sides in the 1970s and 80s, the ultimate decades of passionate partisan football in the country.
After steering Republicans to the top of the recent Western Region Division One football league and qualifying for the playoffs, aiming for a return to the Sierra Leone Premier League next season, Bah's first interaction with the home Leone Stars players as their new Team Manager demonstrates the level of trust and respect the boys have for him.
The players expressed how excited they were to have him as their team manager and said they were more than determined to bring good results.
Bah told Politico that his focus now is to provide the enabling environment for the boys to qualify for the TotalEnergies African Nations Championship CHAN 2023, a tournament set aside for the continent’s home-based players.
Sierra Leone will face Cape Verde in a two-legged tie in Morocco, with the first match scheduled for July 24th, and the second a week later. The winners after the two games will clash with Mali for a place in the tournament to be hosted by Algeria next year.
Bah sees the obvious task ahead and says the entire management and technical team, including Coach Francis Zappa, are all planning and working hard to see the boys make it to CHAN, a tournament Sierra Leone has never qualified for.
He puts a premium on collective efforts and says he will bring on board all the stakeholders to share ideas on how to take the team forward. He watched the home players engage their foreign-based counterparts, who are off-season, in a friendly match that ended 1-1 at the Attouga field on Wednesday, June 29, 2022, and was pleased with what he saw.
But he was quick to point out the need to instill discipline in the squad and said one rule is to ban the players from participating in mini-leagues, instituting penalties on any defaulting player. Generally, he said he sees improvement in football in the country and that the prospects for the game are bright.
"The game is developing and attracting people who are changing the narrative," Bah stated. He was also full of praise for the current SLFA Executive, saying, "They were very serious when I started dealing with them, and they are very aggressive in making things happen, which is a source of motivation for me."
He pointed out that football involves a lot of resources and believed that with the support of the government and other areas, and with the blessings of God, they would be able to surmount the challenges associated with the game. He called for Sierra Leoneans to be behind the team and said the boys are very talented and will be going for a win, though he admitted that football outcomes can be unpredictable or unjust at times.
Bah is a well-established businessman; he is currently the CEO of Sierramin Bauxite Mining Company. He also owns Simbakoro Auto Outlet vehicle dealerships in Sierra Leone and North America.
Bah, also a reputed philanthropist, on Saturday, July 2nd, made a personal donation of 100 match footballs to SLFA. The association’s President, Thomas Daddy Brima, received the donation at their Kingtom Secretariat.
The current CHAN champions are Morocco. Some four Algerian cities will serve as venues for the African Nations Championship Finals that will run from January 8–31, 2023.
The tournament was first held in Ivory Coast in 2009 and was won by the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was established by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) so that home-grown players would be able to represent their countries at the international level and expose themselves globally.
Credit; Alpha Abu
Politico 2022
Team Manager of the home-based Leone Stars, Umar Bah
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