By: Mohamed Abu Conteh
Sierra Leone’s U-17 national team, Sierra Stars, are heading home from Senegal without kicking a ball at the WAFU Zone A U-17 championship following their disqualification from the tournament.
The Sierra Stars’ disqualification, confirmed in a statement by the competition’s organising committee, resulted from five of their players failing a mandatory Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) conducted in Senegal on October 18 after they played to a goalless draw with their Gambian counterparts in a warm-up match.
The names of the five players have not yet been revealed to the Sierra Leone FA (SLFA), which said in a statement that it has received the news as a shock because all 20 players in the Sierra Stars squad had initially passed the MRI test conducted at EcoMed Advanced Medical Diagnosis in Freetown early this month.
The SLFA has further stated that it has immediately launched an appeal requesting a retest of the five players to ensure the accuracy of the results.
The tournament is due to start today and ends on November 3, with the top three teams at the end of the competition qualifying for the U-17 TotalEnergies Africa Cup of Nations tagged in post-finals.
Sierra Stars were originally drawn in group B alongside Mauritania, Guinea Bissau, and Mali, who they were supposed to face in their opening fixture on October 21.
Two other countries, Guinea and Guinea Bissau, have also been disqualified for the same reason, forcing the tournament’s organisers to rearrange the format of the competition so that the remaining five teams play each other in one group.
This isn’t the first time Sierra Stars haven’t participated in the U-17 tournament because they failed MRI tests. It happened in 2021 and when Mohamed Kallon was the team’s coach in 2014.
