March 3, 2021
By: Mohamed Abu Conteh
The Confederation of Africa Football has banned the Sierra Leone Siaka Steven Stadium from hosting International matches. This decision came after several complaints from visiting National teams that the Stadium is not up to standard to host international matches.
According to Deputy Stadium Manager, Alfred Tucker, “we shared the right information with the SLFA Sorie Ibrahim Sesay, but never knew it would be relayed to CAF about the deteriorating state of the Stadium.”
He felt that he they were deceived by the questionnaire sent to them by Mr. Sorie Ibrahim Sesay that sought to gather information about the state of the stadium. CAF is said to have acted on the information as responses from the stadium management to issue the ban notice, A-Z Sport can confirm. This fact has been corroborated by Sorie Ibrahim Sesay the head of competitions at the Sierra Leone Football Association.
He disclosed that the Football Association received correspondent from the Confederation of Africa Football to update them about the Standard of Siaka Stevens Stadium ahead of Leone Stars crunch tie against Benin at home.
He added that when he received the correspondents he visited the Siaka Stevens Stadium management to get relevant information about the Standard of the Stadium based on the information he received.
He further stated that he then filed a questionnaire and sent it to CAF, but based on the information he supplied to CAF , there were some errors therefore he was asked to send video evidences to ascertain the report in the questionnaires which he did.
However, Sierra Leone side have two more matches to play in the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations qualifies with a win in those two matches they would be qualified to the Africa Cup of Nations after 25 years. The one match will be away to Lesotho and play host to Benin later.
Rather due to this ban it means the match against Benin would be possibly played in Guinea.
The Minister of Sports, Ibrahim Nyelenkeh said that Sierra Leone will now look at three possible countries to help in substituting Leone Stars home match play against the Squirrels of Benin.
The National Sports Authority (NSA) in collaboration with the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) will send four people to Guinea to see how best they will host Leone Stars home match.
The Siaka Stevens Stadium was built in 1980 by the late Siaka P. Stevens since then as a Nation we are yet to get a standard FIFA and CAF recognized venue.