Sports
Amputee Football Leadership Told to Resign After Liberia's World Cup Miss
A former association president says the team could have travelled through Istanbul. The government says about US$100,000 in tickets is already lost.
Liberia's amputee football team will not play at the World Cup — and now the people who ran the trip are being told to resign.
Richard Duo, a former president of the Liberia Amputees Football and Sports Association, has demanded the immediate resignation of the association's current president, Johnathan Wheyee, and his administration, after Liberia failed to take part in the 2026 Amputee Football World Cup in Mexico.
Duo made the demand on the OK Sports Desk on Friday, November 14. He accused the leadership of mishandling the team's travel arrangements, saying alternative routes were available — including travelling through Istanbul, Turkey — and that the failure to secure the Spanish transit visas the delegation needed should never have happened.
The team had already secured entry visas from Mexico. What it could not obtain were the Spanish airport transit visas required for its connecting route, and the trip collapsed before it began. The tournament runs from November 13 to 22 in San Juan de los Lagos, Mexico, and Liberia — preparing for what would have been its second consecutive appearance — is not there.
The cost is already counted. The Ministry of Youth and Sports says the government committed more than US$200,000 in financial and logistical support to the team's campaign, and that about US$100,000 was lost on non-refundable airline tickets after the delegation failed to travel as planned.
The ministry has linked the setback to a late request for assistance in obtaining the Spanish transit visas. That account and Duo's do not agree on where the fault lies — one points to a late request, the other to leadership that had other routes and did not use them — and neither side has yet produced the paper trail that would settle it.
What is not in dispute is what the players lost. The squad spent weeks in intensive training in Accra, Ghana, preparing for the tournament, and returned home without playing a match.
What to watch next: whether Wheyee and his administration answer Duo's demand, and whether the Ministry of Youth and Sports reviews how the trip — and the money behind it — was handled.
