The national soccer squad, the Lone Star, did not only put smiles on the faces of the Liberian people, but they also netted millions of Liberian dollars as gate-intakes.

  Impeccable sources at the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Liberia Football Association have divulged that the just-ended match between Lone Star and the Eagles of Mali at the Samuel K. Doe Sport complex has netted over 2 million from monies collected from the sales of the tickets.

  A high-placed source hinted this paper yesterday that the Lone Star Committee On Ticketing, headed by Assistant Minister for Administration at the Ministry of Youth and Sports, Elizabeth
 Omoko, was finalizing the report as relate to the amount that was generated from the game.

  Our sources said Madam Omoko has been in a series of meeting with some top officials from the FA and the Finance Ministry who are also member of the Ticketing Committee.

  According to our sources, the over L$2 million was the center of the meeting, but when Madam Omoko was contacted on the issue, she said she was not in the position to comment to the press on the issue of gate-intakes.

  But a member of the Lone Star Committee said the committee was still trying to finalize the report on the Liberia-Mali match and would shortly publish it for the consumption of the public.

  James Toe, a lover of soccer, said: “I think the LFA and the Ministry of Youth and Sports must have raised some good amount of money from the Liberia-Mali match. What they could do now is to inform the Liberian people as how much they collected from the gate, how they apportioned percentages and how much is left for deposit.”

  James says this is necessary to disabuse the minds of the public that the Liberia Football Association and the Ministry of Youth and Sports are not good managers of funds.

  Agreed Sarah Gban: “There should be some level of transparency in the operations of the sports authorities to convince the government that if they were entrusted with managing funds for the administration of sports in the country they would not be found wanting.”

 An official from National Fisherman Sports Department, James Weah, said both LFA and ministry should act quickly and publish the report including breakdown of the expenditure.

  According to him, such this process had erased apprehensions in the past, and that doing so now would help the public know what is going on.  

  “If the public knows that the money collected from ticket sale is not enough to take Lone Star to the next match, the public will be the advocate for the sports authorities,” Weah noted.

  The SKD Sports complex is a 44 thousand-capacity stadium, built by the People’s Republic of China during the regime of the late Liberian President Samuel Doe.

  And from the manner the stadium was jam-packed to capacity last Sunday, observers believe that the local football house could have risen pretty well above L$2m.