NOW GEORGE PLAYS POLITICAL FOOTBALL
The remarkable tale of Weah, who has gone from player to president...
THE sun had gone down on another sweltering West African day and mosquitoes and bats filled the humid air while goats roamed the sandy ground of this swampland.
In a clearing away from the bamboo-thatch huts that offered slim shelter from the oppressive heat sat a circle of chairs, 13 of them on the front row, with all eyes turned on the man dressed in a white ‘high-high’ suit, the African tunic and trousers worn by the boss men.
For he was the former AC Milan, Chelsea and Manchester City striker, once the best footballer in the world, George Weah. And today at around lunchtime, if arrangements go to schedule, which they never do around here, he will be sworn in as the 25th president of Liberia.
We are a 30-minute drive out of Monrovia, the capital of unimaginable poverty. For the moment, Weah is relaxed, away from the formal engagements that lead up to his inauguration and contemplates why he is seeking to emulate Samuel K Doe, a president he respected.
A master sergeant in the Liberian Army, Doe mounted a military coup in 1980, ending the rule of Americo-Liberians who had held sway here since the republic was established by American slaves in the 1820s.
But Doe’s dictatorship ended with him howling for mercy as his enemies tortured and decapitated him. His chief tormentor, Prince Y Johnson, sipped a beer as Doe’s ears were cut off.
Civil war followed from the late Eighties, killing eight per cent of the population of some four million, and then the Ebola illness struck four years ago, further blighting this land that fortune forgot.
The stadium where today’s ceremonies will take place is named after Doe. Does Weah not fear for his own chances of success, if not life itself? Why is a man who once earned £30,000 a week and won the FA Cup while briefly on loan at Chelsea in 2000 taking this hideous job?
‘Nobody ever thought I would win the Ballon d’Or,’ Weah said of his recognition as Europe’s best footballer in 1995, an accolade he took along with the World Footballer of the Year award, making him the only African to win the honour. ‘So I am confident that we can make Liberia a better place. Nothing is impossible.
‘I came from a slum. I had no money. I succeeded. I worked hard. That is what I am calling on Liberians to do now. They have to work with me and take the chances that I am offering them.’ He is not specific about policy. George Manneh Oppong Weah, known as King George to his countrymen and now aged 51, grew up one of 14 siblings and 10,000 unfortunate souls in the Claratown community in Monrovia, close to the Montserrado River. He kicked a ball in the dust whenever he could, played for local teams before going on to the neighbouring Ivory Coast, where he was recommended in 1988 to Monaco, falling under the benign managership of Arsene Wenger.
From there to Paris SaintGermain before joining AC Milan and winning Serie A in 1996. By the time he arrived in England to make 18 appearances, the remarkable power and pace he allied to prodigious skill were on the wane.
But it is Wenger who stands out in Weah’s mind. ‘He is my father,’ he says. ‘He looked after me like a son. He particularly helped me in two ways.
‘Do not forget how much racism there was back then. (While at Milan, Weah head-butted Porto’s Jorge ‘The Animal’ Costa in the tunnel for allegedly racially abusing him.) Arsene showed me concern, even love, to help me overcome those problems.
‘He also taught me discipline. One day, I had a headache, but he told me to be careful with my talent and gave me the belief that I could become a great player if I gave football everything I had. I listened. Besides God, Arsene did more to make me succeed in European football than anyone else. That is why I have invited him to be at my inauguration.’
Weah’s people do not know if that offer will be accepted but, as of yesterday morning, they were making preparations as though it would be. Though that is perhaps unlikely given Wednesday night’s Carabao Cup semi-final, second leg against Chelsea.
All bumpy roads in Liberia seem to lead to football, from kids playing on the street to adult obsession with the game in Europe. Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool for the older set, Manchester City for the younger, along with Real Madrid and Barcelona.
Even in the jungle interior, where poverty cuts deeper than in the city, they log on to phones and absorb every game of European football. Go into the Winners betting shop on one of the main Monrovia streets any afternoon and rows of men stand to watch reruns of English and Spanish games. Fanatics have been stabbed to death due to a football rivalry transplanted from a continent virtually none of them has ever seen.
Weah has ploughed some of his own money back into Liberian football, not least founding Junior Professionals in his own community, just as he bankrolled the national team — the Lone Stars — when he was the leading player. He also funded a school next to his boyhood house.
HIS family still live in that little dwelling he was born in. His shy sister, Rebecca Nogbeh, asks for a can of soda in return for an ‘interview’. She is proud of George and will be going to today’s ceremonial installation wearing a specially made dress. But there she is chiselling a chunk of coal into smaller shavings to sell on so that she can eat.
Having failed to become president when he first tried in 2005, Weah was the overwhelming winner this time, with more than 60 per cent of the vote. The people clambered into every space to catch a glimpse of him on his many speaking engagements last week. They cheered him fervidly.
He told them that after retiring from football, he went to college to study for diplomas aged 40, addressing the accusation that he is a high-school failure. It makes Ron Atkinson’s slip of the tongue while commentating on Weah — he called him ‘the big librarian’ — all the more piquant.
Yesterday, Weah was at church, driven there in a 4x4 with blackedout windows. This is a largely Christian and highly religious society. Weah and his Jamaican wife Clar worship regularly.
In a land where more than eight out of every ten people, many of them former child soldiers of a hellish war, barely exist on just a pound a day, President Weah will need all the assistance he can summon.