Sierra Leone Football Club Hailed For Just Coming Home
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- GrandKnow2
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more from News:
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSL828130220080811
FREETOWN (Reuters) - A boys' soccer team from Sierra Leone won silver at a tournament in Sweden, but were hailed as champions in their poor West African homeland -- because they all came home.Sierra Leone is bottom of the U.N. development rankings and its athletes frequently vanish when traveling abroad for sporting fixtures in order to seek asylum, meaning many Western countries now simply refuse to let them in.
"It's rare for a whole team of Sierra Leoneans to go abroad and come back," Kweku Lisk, legal adviser to their club, FC Johansen, told reporters in the capital Freetown Friday.
"It goes to show what Sierra Leone can do when it puts its mind to it. We have managed to stick a feather in the cap for the country," he said.
More than 250 teams entered this year's Mittnorden Cup in Sweden, but Freetown's FC Johansen was the first African team to compete in the tournament's 27-year history, thanks to the club's main supporter, the eponymous Swedish Honorary Consul Arne Johansen.
The club is made up of underprivileged children, many of them orphaned during the country's savage 1991-2002 civil war.
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rickrosas
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well done, and thank you
- 1 year ago
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rickrosas
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JanieLou
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Well done boys, you're a credit to your beautiful country and this will hopefully encourage other talented Sierra Leoneons (sporting and professional) to stay and help develop their country. What good are you to your economy if you leave? Wishing you much success!
- 1 year ago
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JanieLou
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cecone
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Its nice to see some positive attention on Sierra Leon.
- 1 year ago
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cecone
