By M.V. Paasewe
March 23, 2003

      The local football governing body, the Liberia Football Association (LFA), has reacted sharply to the March 21, 2003 Ministry of Youth and Sports press release which called for the withdrawal of the national soccer team for international encounters for the next five years.
LFA President Edwin Snowe

        According to the Press and Public Affairs Officer of the LFA, Mr. Trokon Tarr, the decision by the MYS was "unilateral", without the consent of the LFA and other stakeholders of the Lone Star.

       "In fact, Mr. Snowe and the Chief Patron of Sports (President Charles Taylor) were recently engaged in telephone conversation. He (Snowe) has assured that the team will honor its Ethiopia encounter next week," Tarr told our correspondent in Monrovia.

       Edwin Snowe, the LFA head, is currently in the United States where he is enrolled at a University.

 
    Tarr said Snowe further assured the Liberian people that President Taylor does not wish to see the national soccer team withdrawn from the 2004 African Nations Cup

      The LFA counter-statement is seen by sports analysts as a continuation of the see-saw frigid-warm relationship that subsisted between the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the local football authority charged with implementing the technical affairs of the national soccer team.


Ministry of Youth and Sports Min Max Dennis
Talks to the players at practice.

       Following Lone Star's poor performance at the 2002 African Nations Cup in Mali, authorities of the two institutions were at serious loggerheads over who should be empowered to restructure the national team.