Following the shambolic performance of our national football team, the Black Stars in Libya against war-torn Sudan, the over 30 million Ghanaian supporters are angry and prescribed various solutions.
We think the Black Stars in its present form, the technical team and the Ghana Football Association (GFA) led by Kurt Okraku are no longer fit for purpose. Ghana will continue to be a laughing stock in the global football community if the status quo is not altered.
For sometime now, and especially when Kurt Okraku and his football people took over the management of Ghana football, the national team continues to break the hearts of Ghanaians. Ever since, less fancied national teams in Comoros Island, Niger, Seychelles, Madagascar and Angola have become hard nuts for us to crack.
Over a decade ago, at the World Cup in South Africa, Ghana was the toast of the world, even among the very strong football nations such as Spain, France, England, Brazil and Germany. Prior to that and in 2006, the Black Stars set the world “ablaze” by their scintillating performance in Germany.
Perhaps, by some Indian spell cast on us like John Mahama, the performance of the Black Stars began to dip during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, culminating in the establishment of the Justice Senyo Dzamefe Commission to look into that abysmal showing.
Some recommendations were made by Justice Dzamefe, but as usual most of them ended up on the shelves to gather dust. Then presto, investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw, did his exposé named ‘Number 12’, in which he stripped naked some of the “cobwebs” in the GFA then led by Kwesi Nyantakyi.
So explosive was the findings that the country became angry and demanded swift action to reform football administration in Ghana. Kwesi Nyantakyi was asked to step aside from national, continental and global football assignments. Consequently, the world’s football governing body, FIFA, asked the government to form a Normalisation Committee headed by Kofi Amoah, who was honoured by former President John Kufuor to be the Chairman of the Local Organising Committee of CAN 2008.
By that exposé by Anas, who alone knew the motive and the autocratic decisions of Kofi Amoah, our football is in its current state with the virtual collapse of the local league.
The Kurt Okraku administration was borne out of these two interventions in the development of football in the country.
The last time the Black Stars earned a silverware was in Libya in 1982. This must be a shame, especially by the Black Stars, a team that some years back put the fear of God in today’s football greats in Africa and beyond.
It is not only the football people led by Kurt Okraku who have brought a curse onto our football fields but the technical team, now led by the very uninspiring coach, Otto Addo, who is globally known as a scout rather than a strategist and a tactician on the football field.
And to add salt to our injury is the attitude of the playing body, whose leadership has not been stable over the last few years since Asamoah Gyan exited the Black Stars. Dede Ayew, Thomas Partey, Jordan Ayew and last Tuesday, Mohammed Kudus, have not inspired the players and provided the leadership, when the going was tough.