The current crop of players in the senior national team is not ready, in body, soul and mind, to win any title for themselves and the nation. No one should blame the coach and now former coach CK Akonnor for the misfortunes of the Ghana Black Stars.
Today, any football lover watches matches of the Ghana Black Stars with indifference and not enthusiasm. Fact is, there is nothing exciting about the team’s display on the field. Watching the senior national team play is akin to watching children in the academy learning how to give a good pass to their teammates. There’s nothing exciting about their legwork to hold you glued to your seat.
A very pathetic team to watch these days.
The once glorious, and ferocious Ghana Black Stars ready at all times to make meat out of its opponents has been reduced to a whimpering lame duck almost always struggling to net just one goal in any given match. Things are that bad for our national team and I am afraid they are getting worse by the day.
But there’s only one explanation for this sorry state of affairs, and it is that the Ghana Football Association (GFA) as it is presently constituted does not have what it takes to provide the stellar leadership required to reposition our senior national team. It’s a limping Association with a battered image following the sudden exit of former GFA President Kwesi Nyantakyi over corruption allegations. The current President, Kurt Edwin Simeon-Okraku should not be expected to do much because he won’t and can’t. At the moment, he is just occupying a void created by Kwesi Nyantakyi – nothing more, nothing less.
If we want a strong leadership at the GFA, that will ensure an independent call-up of players to the Black Stars, it appears we may have to wait for a long time. The cabal at the GFA will not allow this to happen because they benefit from the misfortunes of our team.
But let me admit that the way we see the Ghana Black Stars is not the same way that the leadership of the GFA sees it. While the rest of the nation sees a struggling national team, the GFA sees opportunities – to maximise profit.
And as was predicted, when they realised consensus was building against them over the poor performance of the Black Stars in the 2022 World Cup Qualifiers, the GFA chose to sack CK Akonnor to appease its gods who can never go wrong. For the folks at the GFA everything is about personal profit and not national interest.
If the GFA had been motivated by the national interest, I doubt its President and the other
executives would have expended precious time in a meeting expressly to discuss the dismissal of CK Akonnor, a man who was building a formidable team.
To build a strong team that can rally the support of Ghanaians, we need a stable leadership at the Ghana Black Stars. We should be ready to give the team a steady, stable and competent coach – local (recommended) or foreign – who will build the structures, work on the confidence of the players and improve their goal-scoring abilities.
Clearly, prostituting the Ghana Black Stars by changing the coach based on the whims and caprices of the GFA leadership is surely not the best way to build a solid team.
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Kwabena Brakopowers is a development communications practitioner, journalist, and an author whose works focus on communication, migration, international relations, and politics. He could be reached at Brakomen@outlook.com
