{{Football authorities in Sierra Leone have indefinitely suspended four national team players, including captain Ibrahim Kargbo, three referees and eight other officials on allegations of match-fixing.}}<\/p>\n
Three of the players had been called up to play in Saturday\u2019s African Nations Cup qualifier against Seychelles in Freetown.<\/p>\n
In a press release jointly signed by sports minister Paul Kamara and Sierra Leone Football Association president Isha Johansen, the 15 are alleged to have been involved in fixing the outcome of a Nations Cup qualifier against South Africa in 2008 which ended in a goalless draw.<\/p>\n
The release says the two institutions received “credible and tangible information” on the alleged involvement of the group in match-fixing and that the players will have nothing to do with the weekend fixture.<\/p>\n
Kargbo had last seasson been playing club football in Belgium but was most recently on trial at Swindon Town in England.<\/p>\n
The other players implicated are defender Ibrahim Koroma, who plays at Varbarg in Sweden; Samuel Barlay, who plays in Azerbaijan and goalkeeper Christian Caulker who plays for local side FC Kallon.<\/p>\n
The suspended officials include football administrator, Rodney Michael who was controversially disqualified from running for FA President in August last year on allegations that he had links to a sports-betting company.<\/p>\n
Michael said he was “in total shock” and referred to it as “a political interference into the running of football”.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Reuters from London, he called the suspension “a witch-hunt because I am leading a crusade for the FA to hold its annual congress which is stated in the constitution to (be held) not later than August this year”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Football authorities in Sierra Leone have indefinitely suspended four national team players, including captain Ibrahim Kargbo, three referees and eight other officials on allegations of match-fixing.}} Three of the players had been called up to play in Saturday\u2019s African Nations Cup qualifier against Seychelles in Freetown. In a press release jointly signed by sports minister […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000053069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[100],"byline":[334],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-15371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-africa","byline-igihe-reporter"],"bylines":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":334,"name":"IGIHE Reporter","slug":"igihe-reporter","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":{"id":2000053069,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15371.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15371.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15371.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15371.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15371.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton15371.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000053069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15371"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=15371"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=15371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}