It’s been 64 years, six months, some days and hours as I write, since Kwame Nkrumah declared ‘Black Man is capable of handling his own affairs.’ It’s consoling he didn’t say Black Woman. Trust me, the women would have done it by now, if we had entrusted that responsibility to them. So maybe some Black Woman would complete the liberation struggle; because left to the Black men, there is hardly hope.
In year 2021, after producing a world-beater team with stars Michael Essien, Stephen Appiah, Sule Muntari and Asamoah Gyan at the 2006 World Cup, the motherland has not one man to coach her team to win tournaments. Really? And to my little knowledge, which I hope is not a dangerous thing, it is much the fault of a lethal superiority complex of players and coaches of inferiority complex.
The one before the one just sacked (whom I had idolised) messed up the team with long term consequences by implanting indiscipline as in ‘I will not play if you don’t include my brother in the team’ to being promoted a captain. That was as a captain was removed without a thank you. Coach, the one before the one just sacked, had initially parried away the whiner’s whim, only to capitulate later. So, ‘Play my brother or I won’t play’ attitude is what one needs to be a captain leader?’
‘Shameless man,’ an enraged wife character in a Nigerian movie would scold her philandering husband. Shameless men to the coach appointer!! Why be in a hurry because you want trophy? You should work for it for as long as it will take. After all hurrying with ampɛbrɛ white coach appointments has not brought any trophies.
My guess is that this is a team of low morale, less matriotic dedication and playing for money instead of playing for matriotic pride. I can’t see a team winning by that attitude of divided we play or playing for myself and not playing for the motherland.
Some years back, I happened to have entered into a conversation with one of the three unwise men who procured the coach returnee. He was convinced beyond every reasonable doubt that there can’t be a competent world-class Ghanaian coach. When I referred him to how the Ohene Djan sports administration, the Central Organisation of Sports, produced player coach Charles Kumi Gyamfi to win trophies, he was adamant that the FA should have no role in producing coaches other than procuring them.
Today, I am reminded of procurement as everything for people put in charge of doing something to make us and our motherland prosper. Public leaders are more interested in how much they invisibly make for themselves through a procurement process, than how well they manage the motherland’s resources into prosperity for all of us.
I never met or spoke to Michael Essien, Stephen Appiah, Sule Muntari or Asamoah Gyan. I only saw Appiah and Muntari afar at Milan Airport when they had just arrived there from the 2006 World Cup, where they had performed creditably. They were actually pointed out to me by an Italian lady with whom I had just been at a conference.
Not ever met or spoken to any of the 2006 World Cup ‘fearsome foursome,’ I cannot tell the kind of comradeship and team spirit with which they had played. There could have been some love of country even if they had been friends and had clicked as a team because they were friends. Maybe, I would have had more insights to be able to make a case of lack of camaraderie as one of the key deficits in a current Black Stars team in search of a trophy.
Love of money seems to have plagued the football officialdom among whom you find sellers of a ball of kenkey for USD30. Ohene Djan’s passion for the game and success playing it no longer seem to exist. That, and especially how it characterised players and their play, as I have heard the great Osei Kofi say many times over, is what is missing in national football campaign and the trophies that are expected from it.
All along, so far, it’s been short cut approaches. Get a foreign coach and he will deliver. Ignorant as I am, I thought the winning strategy is build a team over a long term. It’s hard because once the local player gets into the limelight, he sees an opportunity in making money abroad. People make money by grooming and selling players. It’s an enterprise.
It, therefore, seems you can only play with frɛfrɛ kɔ bɔ (individualised) foreign-based players, coached by foreign coaches because they are the good ones. Check this out: GHANAIAN players don’t have enough respect for Ghanaian coaches, so only foreign coaches are good enough for the Black Stars.
They are the ‘can’t doers’ in our midst. God punish them for thinking Black incapability (worse still act upon that thinking). God punish them, especially, should they ever mention Kwame Nkrumah’s name, as if they want any good for this motherland. White coach by all means is a lethal inferiority complex that condemns the Black race to perpetual ignominy.
The beef is where is the enterprising approach to building a Black Stars team of Ghanaian players, coached by a Ghanaian coach, to win trophies? It seems an idea berefted of those who can only be described as money first pretenders who claim succession to the Director of Central Organisation of Sports, the winner great, great Ohene Djan.
By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh