Africa-Press – Lesotho. The Lesotho Football Association (LEFA) has given Likuena players and technical team from the COSAFA Cup a cool M250 000 to share among themselves. The jackpot is the prize money that Likuena received as runners up to Zambia in last month’s final in Durban, South Africa.
LEFA president Advocate Salemane Phafane announced that the association will not get a cent from the prize money and it will all go directly to the team.
Phafane said reaching the COSAFA Cup final was one of the targets the association had set for themselves in their 2023-26 strategic plan. “In the first year of the strategic plan we got there.
How did we get there? Planning. We are investing a lot in development,” Phafane said. “You now know how many Under-15 kids are playing, both boys and girls. These are players that we are saying should get here (to the national team),” he said.
Addressing Likuena players in attendance, Phafane said they had earned the financial windfall which will go a long way for many of the players who still receive limited incomes from local club football.
“The money COSAFA gives us as prize money (is) to try to compensate for the expenses (incurred) for reaching the stage we did, the executive committee has decided to give you all that money,” LEFA president said.
“We will be taking no cent from it, it will go directly to you. Let’s keep fighting, no one said go and play and you will get M250 000, you went out and fought,” he said.
The association also thanked the former Minister of Finance, Timothy Thahane, for his support of the national team before they left for Durban. Phafane handed Thahane a framed national team photo, a pennant as well as a Likuena replica shirt as a gesture of appreciation.
“When the team was preparing for the tournament in Durban everybody knew, there was no one that didn’t know that LEFA had registered the team for the COSAFA Cup,” Phafane said.
“If there is anyone who helped the team to be where it is today besides ntate Thahane I would be forgetting. There is no one who helped LEFA.
There is not one business person, not one minister, there has not been any part of the government that helped,” he added. “We were on our own as LEFA to take the team and be where they are today, except ntate Thahane.
We didn’t even ask (for help), he volunteered to help. The ministry knew, everyone knew, they knew the budget and they chose not to give even a cent for the players to go to Durban,” Phafane said.
Phafane praised the whole team and said they had made the country proud. He said Likuena had made southern Africa proud. “You have demonstrated that there is no small country, there was a time when it was believed that to get to the COSAFA final was reserved territory for certain countries,” he said.
“You have broken that record, it’s not something countries equal to us (in size) take for granted, you have given them hope.”
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