All leagues: premier, first, second, women, third and fourth divisions, will all begin concurrently in October. Registration fees are omitted.

The Chairman of the Competitions Committee of the LFA, Executive Committee Member Samuel Karn, to this moment, is at the receiving end of praises from scores of stakeholders and the likes for manufacturing the 2010 National Leagues Rules and Regulations. There are indeed several changes in the document, parity to conventional youth football development and commercialization, as compare to previous ones.

The document, which has the leagues running from October to May 2011, approves eight competitions: premier, first, second and women leagues, the LFA Cup, LFA Sub Association/Sub Committee-3rd and 4th division league, as well as the President’s Cup Competition and the Super Cup.

To the delight of many, winners and runners up to each of these competitions will walk away with record breaking cash prices and trophies. Take the premiership for paradigm where the champion stands to receive six hundred thousand Liberian dollars (600,000.00) including a trophy. That is in the case of no sponsorship for the league. The cash price could leap frog to US ten thousand dollars (10,000.00) in the event sponsorship is available (which will certainly be the case).

The quintessence of these financial remunerations, in the vision of the LFA president Musa Bility, is to bring back the lost spirit of rivalry in the national leagues. Enviable financial rewards to champion clubs and runners up is core to the reintroduction to competition in the various leagues, the LFA president emphasized during and after the LFA election.

According to the new rules, the 18 premier clubs will be maintained but at the end of the league, six teams with the lowest points on the table will be relegated to the lower division. And only two will be promoted from the first division to the premier, meaning beginning the following league season, there will be 12 premier clubs.

At the same time, intone with commercialization, premier clubs will be registered as corporate entities. Thus, the instrument makes it mandatory for them to have a current bank account liable for inspection by the LFA. By 2012, premier clubs are also mandated to have feeder teams each.

There will be reduction in the number of teams in the Sub-Committee, a maximum of 22 clubs for 3rd division and 12 clubs for 4th division. The lowest for both divisions shall be 8 clubs.

In the Sub-Association, there will be a maximum of 12 clubs for 3rd division and 8 for 4th division, with the lowest in both divisions standing at 8 and 6 clubs respectively.

The brainchild of the Samuel Karn Committee further added age limits to the 3rd and 4th divisions as follow:
a. Non division…9-13years,
b. 4th division…14-17years,
c. 3rd division…18-20years
The issue of local transfer fees was also touched by the upcoming leagues’ legal instrument. For the premier league, transfer is not to exceed two hundred thousand Liberian dollars (200,000.00), while the first division category shall not exceed hundred thousand Liberian dollars (100,000.00).

The LFA is empowered by law and statute to organize, control, direct and regulate football activities in the country. Though the pending leagues will run from October to May next year, the Executive Committee of the LFA “may for good cause, extend or shorten the period of the on-league season (regular league)”.

The release of the new rules and regulations for the pending leagues adds to the many fulfilments of promises made by the Musa Bility administration on induction day in March of this year. At the peak of the promises are a league season void of financial registration and the provision of apparels for clubs; all now on course.