One thing going for the Sierra Leone team that will host Bafana Bafana for the World Cup/Africa Cup of Nations qualifier is that they have — in Kanu — one of the most feared and respected names in African football.
It is a pity, though, that their Kanu is not Nwankwo, the Nigerian two-time African footballer of the year, who last month scored for Portsmouth to help the club win their first FA Cup in 69 years. The Kanu in the Leone Stars set-up is head coach Ahmed Kanu.
There is little else that speaks for the West African state of six million, one of whose best-known citizens is Foday Sankoh.
With Liberian Charles Taylor, Sankoh succeeded in plunging the region into a bloody decade of carnage and instability. Sankoh, mercifully some would say, died of complications relating to a stroke he suffered while on trial for war crimes.
But back to football.
Ranked 163rd in the world — almost 100 places behind the South Africans — the Leone Stars are by far the weakest side of the four in Bafana’s group contesting the trip to Angola and later South Africa in 2010.
The journalistic imperative of accentuating the positive will require that we mention that they have improved greatly from the 172nd berth they occupied last September. Other than that there is little to say for the nation ravaged by civil war between 1991 and 2000.
As a consequence of the war, football development was not a priority for a nation that had more pressing needs. The United Nations Human Development Index, which measures life expectancy, literacy levels, educational attainment and gross domestic product per capita, puts the West African nation as the worst off in the world.
Sierra Leone are currently at the bottom of their pool, though they threatened the surprise of the round when they held the mighty Nigeria to a goalless draw for most of the match — until normalcy prevailed. Joseph Yobo’s scrambled goal in the last minute put Sierra Leone firmly in their place.
So mediocre were Sierra Leone’s attempts on the international sports stage that they celebrated the fact that they kept the Super Eagles from achieving the inevitable for as long as they did.
Nobody should blame them. The best they have done in international football was to qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations in 1994 and 1996. In both cases they played their obligatory three first-round matches and then flew home to watch the rest of the tournament on television.
But their valiant effort against Nigeria should have South Africa worried. The South Africans are traditionally bad travellers and the Leone Stars should test whether the confidence brimming in the South African camp, thanks to the past weekend win, is as fleeting as was the despair after the loss to Nigeria.
Bafana won their last match convincingly — forget for a moment that the 4-1 win was against the group’s other outsiders, Equatorial Guinea.
But in football, winning or losing is habit-forming and it hardly matters who you win — or lose — against.
Coach Joel Santana is happy but there will be no fooling anyone that South Africa are still in need of a reliable goal-getter.
The South Africans still need to get past the psychological block that prevents them from expressing themselves against the Nigerians.
But these are happy days for Bafana. They don’t always last long, so let them enjoy while they last. Striker Thembinkosi Fanteni and midfielder Kagisho Dikgacoi, who plays in what the Brazilians call the rudder position, have opened their goal-scoring accounts for the national team. Fans will hope they continue against Leone Stars.