No pain, No gain


If there is No pain...certainly there would be No gain...a fact which is fulfilled by a young person who is a talented footballer and who is really worthy of being named "The deer" for his elegant play and for his special style in the field...This player is Roda Antar.
Roda, a 22 years old guy, was born in Africa (Sierra Leone particularly) due to the harsh circumstances that Lebanon was passing through. When he returned to Lebanon, he started his football career playing for Tadamon Sour where his family lived and his
football career was very extinguished for many reasons.

The first is that Roda began to play football in Tadamon along with his elder brother Faisal and they were a great help for Tadamon to get the title and it was nearly achieved in the 2000-2001 season.
This duo became celebrated figures just like many other famous brothers who played football together like Brian and Michael Laudrope who played for Denmark, Frank and Ronald De Boer who played for Holland and many other Duos.

The other fascinating feature which marked Roda's career was his ability to play in any role given by the coach...whether a strike, a playmaker or even a wing defender (he should start training as a goalie to be "The Perfect player"). This ability to play a free role
was a great help for Tadamon. This feature in addition to his speed, his eye view of the field, his sense of humor and his leadership
impressed the scouts of Hamburg SV and Roda made it and was the first professional Lebanese player.

Roda at the beginning of his career was backed up by everyone. The media, the fans and the LFA and his first season was not bad
especially at the end of the season and he continued his great performance at the beginning of this season when he scored his first goal with Hamburg and he became a regular player on the list of the selected players.
The turning point came this year with Roda's injury when he got injured in his knee and got away of the playing field for several months. It was a turning point because the Lebanese media and the fans turned their backs on him (except for few persons).
This negligence was out of no reason and the media right now is not giving him what he really deserves. Is it because he is not performing well?? We've got to remember several reasons for this...first of all he is coming back from injury and he needs time to get in shape again...another things is that there are several players now at Hamburg who plays in his same position especially Takahara...did the media or the fans ever in Italy give up on
Alessandro Del Piero or Franscesco Totti when they were injured...
certainly not because they have a professional mind in football and
know how hard is the injury...Let's forget about the physical injury...but I think that he has no a psychological injury because everyone is against him...This injury can overstepped by encouraging Roda and should come from the fans and from the media.
I don't want indulge further in this subject but I beg everyone to give him more time, he is only 22 years and instead of criticizing him, all of us should back him up for the sake of the development of our football. To clear this out, the talented players here in Lebanon would then say "if I'm going to be criticized heavily at my first slip, then I don't want to be a professional player at any cost".

Another thing that struck me is that no company in Lebanon invested Roda's professionalism...Major companies in Japan have put their Ads in the Tardini Stadium in Parma where Hidetoshi Nakata plays because they have a lot of people who watch the Calcio just to see Nakata...I know a lot of my friends who started supporting Hamburg and started
watching the Bundesliga just to see Roda...I can't imagine that the Lebanese are wasting their time in useless discussions about Roda's Loyalty for his national team and such useless stuff which at the end
will harm our football and we'll stay still where we are now...All we
need right now is to put all our efforts to make our young talented
players like Unika, Khudor Najdi, Fadi Ghosson, Abbas Atwi, Mohammad
Kassas, Mohammad Halawi and many other promising players to get their
chance because they are our only hope of a successful football
generation and who knows you could be the next Roda Antar...

Editor: Mohammad Hallal