Senior national team, the Black Stars, returned from the African Cup of Nations just as their predecessors had done for the past 37 years, obviously without a trophy to fulfil the hopes and expectations of the teeming Ghanaian football fans.
Last week Thursday’s (February 2, 2017) defeat against the Indomitable Lions brought to an end the buoyancy and confidence of the Black Stars to return with the most coveted silverware on the continent’s most prestigious football tournament.
Football connoisseurs and analysts had predicted that the exact moment for the Black Stars to clinch the trophy had to be in Gabon considering the level of preparation and the team’s attempt to win back the love and support of Ghanaians after the 2014 World Cup fiasco.
Avram Grant’s experience as a top coach and his target of winning the tournament as mentioned by the GFA President, Kwesi Nyantakyi, was something high on the agenda of Ghanaians when they journeyed to Dubai to begin preparations for the tournament.
Even President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo yearned for the trophy to climax his victory and to catapult his campaign for change in every aspect of the Ghanaian social, political and to a larger extent the sporting fraternity, especially football
President Nyantakyi had promised Ghanaians that Avram Grant will deliver the trophy after describing the 2015 tournament as a test case for the former Chelsea and Portsmouth manager who has amassed estimated $2.2million dollars since taking over from former Black Stars skipper, Kwesi Appiah.
Issues with winning bonuses and packages for the Stars were all but sorted out even with a change in national administration leaving many Ghanaians in the wonderland on how the Black Stars missed out on the Golden Fleece after lifting it in Lybia’82. Cameroon—now five time winners—had not won a single AFCON trophy when the Black Stars won the competition in a grand style in Libya while runners up, Egypt, had only won twice since.
Both the Pharaohs and the Indomitable Lions can now confidently boast of accumulated 10 AFCON trophies between them while the Black Stars continue to reel in the quagmire of disappointments with their best performances coming in the 1992, 2010 and 2015 editions of the tournament.
So what went wrong with the Black Stars?
Part of the blame has been apportioned on head coach, Avram Grant, and I make no bones at all with that. Grant took over from a team that had lost the grandeur of what was to be one of the best performances from an African team at a World Cup.
Many reckoned that Grant’s appointment after the sack of Kwesi Appiah would have been the turning point in realigning Ghana’s deteriorating football, taken into consideration the details of his contract and the unflinching trust by the GFA president.
Mr. Nyantakyi explained that the former Chelsea boss would as part of his contract act as a technical director of all the national teams in the country with a responsibly to also monitor training regimes and development at the (U-17, U-20, U-23 and also the women’s teams).This contract was sealed with the Israeli earning a whopping $200,000 dollars as signing fee with a monthly salary of $50,000 dollars. Mr. Nyantakyi confidently told the press on that day that “He has shown us many things and is the best candidate we have interviewed”
But has Grant assisted in developing football in Ghana? The simple answer is NO. Grant failed to show up on numerous occasions on Premier League match days to monitor the players as his contract stipulates. He also had an additional responsibility to conduct coaching seminars for local coaches to unearth talents for the development of the game.
This was part of the main reason why no outfield player was ever depended on by Grant to make up his squad for any of his matches. Ghana Premier League’s best player and top goal scorer, Latif Blessing, was ignored because he thought many of his bench warming payers were better off to deliver than him.
Another striking and an undeniable fact that marvels many footballs fans is the exclusion of Austria-based striker, Raphael Dwamena, before the team left for camping in Dubai. He was prior to the tournament Ghana’s highest scoring player in Europe, having banged a record 18 goals in 20 appearances with a number of assists, but was axed from the team even though he had hit an incredible scoring form during the Stars training sessions. But instead an unfit Asamoah Gyan and Jonathan Mensah were preferred ahead of him.
Grant failed to generate competition in the Black Stars by creating a template of a team with the same set of players making up the core of his call-up One could easily predict Avram Grant’s selections prior to any of his international and friendly matches with a 95 accuracy.
In fact the coach of the Indomitable Lions, Hugo Broos, revealed after their semi-final clash with Ghana that “it is easy preparing for Ghana than any other African nation in the last two years because you are always sure it will be the same players with the same strategy.”
And so it came to pass, the same set of player’s embarrassingly failed the nation again. But another question still lingers: and that is, do we have to blame Grant alone? Certainly not!
His paymasters are also blameworthy because they made us believe that Grant’s appointment was the best the country needed at that moment. Proper monitoring and what could be best described as a breach in protocol and a lack of respect for authority was the length to which the GFA allowed Grant to do them.
He left the country without permission from the GFA and would never budge when they told him to return to his duties here in Ghana. No sanctions were meted out to him and no apologies were rendered by Grant when he touches down in Accra.
It was so clear that GFA had lost grip and had no authority over Grant anymore. They would rather defend him at the expense of the incessant cries of Ghanaians to sack him.
Their issues with the ministry of youth and sports were of much concern to them than remodeling and building a formidable squad that can conquer Africa once again. It seemed to many that at a point officials of the GFA were only anxious to know how much they were benefiting from competing than the results of the matches which mattered most to Ghanaians. The GFA was ready to devour every tongue that lashed out at them with no regrets.
Well the die has been cast and the Ghanaian taxpayer has lost again. All hopes now rest on the new sports minister to salvage and overturn events in the restoration of sanity in Ghana football. Ghanaians can hold brief for him because he as usual will have to study the structures but once he gets onto the wheels, an obligation to oversee a total revolution of football will be required of him.
Join GhanaStar.com to receive daily email alerts of breaking news in Ghana. GhanaStar.com is your source for all Ghana News. Get the latest Ghana news, breaking news, sports, politics, entertainment and more about Ghana, Africa and beyond.
