Monrovia – LISCR FC were held to 0-0 draw at home to Maranatha in the CAF preliminary round as they existed the tournament on 3-0 aggregate.
LISCR coach, Tapha Manneh blamed their elimination from the tournament on his players’ inabilities to step out the game away from home.
“The mindset of the players and when it comes to football as far as the league is concerned. If you win as a champion, your next level is international. When we play outside, you feel it from the players that they are not comfortable. They don’t play like the way they play in Liberia,” Manneh said.
The Shipping Boys were certain to overturn the 3-0 deficit in Monrovia, a fate that has never been achieved from any Liberia club.
The LISCR coach went with an attacking mentality, with the returned of Christopher Jackson, who missed the first leg in Togo through injury.
Though, the Gambian tactician missed Sam Jackson, who had sustained a muscle injury during the warm-up.
LISCR FC had a pathetic display in the first 20th minutes as the visitors kept them a bay with the defensive tactics.
Coach Manneh converted to a 4-3-3 formation to have more creativities, in midfield but his side was more of pedestrians in attack as both sides went to the break without a ball on target.
After the interval, LISCR opponent, Maranatha, set the sight on the next round of the tournament and its Ghanaian tactician, Jimmy Corbblah, who was boastful in the pre-match press conference of his side’s qualification, stuck to his defensive approach to frustrate the Liberian side.
And the frustration increased for the Shipping Boys as they had limited attacks. At some point, Coach Manneh became furious on the touchline after the referee ignored what he thinks was a penalty in the 84th minute.
In a post-match press conference, Coach Manneh said his side was unfortunate and he thinks they should have been awarded a penalty.
“It was unfortunately for us the second leg. We played two strikers to press out opponent but we couldn’t keep the ball and that cause us to change our formation from 4-4-2 to 4-3-3.”
The game wasn’t easy for us. I think we got two penalties but this is individual opinion and it was the referee who was in charge of the game. To me, it was penalty but he didn’t see that as penalty,” Coach Manneh said.
Adding, “Sam Jackson killed our hope because he got an injury at very bad stage and we were relaying on Edward Ledlum but he didn’t work today.”
Meanwhile, Liberia’s other representative in the CAF Champions League, LPRC Oilers were knocked out of the competition following a 3-0 defeat to Generation Foot. The Oilers Boys won the first leg in Monrovia 1-0 and suffered a humiliating 3-0 that sent them out of the tournament on 3-1 aggregate.