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PAYNESVILLE. — Two days after announcing a fresh bid to become president of Liberia, ex-football star George Weah sits munching a doughnut on the concrete steps of a suburban football pitch, barefoot and joking with his friends.

Here, the carefully trimmed turf of former clubs AC Milan and Paris St Germain is replaced with simple chalk markings in the sand, and crowd numbers don’t edge higher than 50 during a 3-2 thriller won by his veterans’ team.

“He’s a local boy, came from here,” says spectator Wilson Toba, looking on as the six-foot (1.84-metre) Weah begins his warm-up, catching the attention of skinny boys leaning on the walls of the stand. “We are poor people, and we all support him.”

Many Liberians still idolise Weah (49), who announced his intention on Thursday to contest an election to replace President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf next year. Nowhere is that truer than in Paynesville, just east of Liberia’s capital, Monrovia.

The striker practises every Saturday and plays a match every Sunday at the neighbourhood’s Willis D. Knuckles Jr sports stadium, accompanied by some fellow former players from the national team.

The matches are held on the edge of a slum, with rubbish kept meticulously off the field but piled up nearby, as stray dogs search for shade from the punishing sun.

Starting his career as a young man raised in poverty, Weah went on to play for a string of top-flight European clubs, becoming the first African player to win both the FIFA World Player of the Year and the Ballon d’Or.

His political career has been less stellar so far, beginning with a failed first bid for the presidency in 2005 before a successful run for Liberia’s senate in 2014 representing the county to which Paynesville belongs. — AFP.