Sports Features of Thursday, 11 June 2015

Source: Isaac Kyei Andoh

Its official: Silas Tetteh is a very poor tactician

Watching Ghana lose in humiliating fashion again less fancied Mali, only one question kept creeping into my mind.

Has Silas Tetteh any knowledge of tactics in football?

If you have the habit of doing one thing again, and again without success and keep up with it again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again and again; congratulations! you are Silas Tetteh.

Can a Ghana team play that bad in a major international tournament? Yes, when coached by Silas Bobor Tetteh.

This is the fastest article I have written since becoming a journalist and I don’t even care if it’s full of grammatical errors. After all, in my country, we celebrate mediocrity. Who knows, I might be doing a Silas Tetteh if your disappointment disables you from making sound judgement of this poor piece.
It will not be the first though. The same thing happened in 2009 when we lifted the World Youth Trophy. Our excitement eclipsed our ability to make critical analyses.

Guess what, he even landed an international. A rare achievement for a Ghanaian coach; and as you know, he did his best by failing miserably.

Unfortunately, the joy of 2009 lingers on so our emotional FA sentimentally gave him the job to do his old trick without including a Dede Ayew, Domnic Adiya, Ransford Osei Agyemang Badu and T B Joshua.

Silas Tetteh as a coach has never impressed me as far as his tactical reasoning is concerned.

When watch a Silas Tetteh coached team play the first ten minute of virtually every game, you can just switch of your TV and sleep. You won’t be surprised just as I wasn’t when I predicted a humiliating defeat after watching the first 10 minutes of our game against Mali.

In football, tactical versatility is what separate good coaches from ordinary coaches and further separates ordinary coaches from Silas Tetteh.
Right from kick-off in the game against Mali, our ‘men/kids’ started floating long balls forward against the team with the height average in the tournament and predictably became second best on almost every occasion .

Standing on the touchline throughout the match, our coach folded his arms and kept watch and watching until the referee personally alerted him that the 90 minutes was over.

Despite his huge physical appearance and overrated achievement in age level competitions, Silas Tetteh still lacks the presence of an under 20 coach on the touchline and I find that baffling.

His reading of the game remains ever poor and seems always at lost on when to substitute and even who for who.

As usual of Bobor on the touchline, he always wears an anxious face like reminiscent of spectators though he is ever well placed to affect changes on the field of play and that is not very good for the psyche of our young players even if their faces appear no so young.
He is one of the few coaches if not the unique one out of the lot who can stand by the touchline for 90 minutes without changing a thing.
I am not a bad loser and I don’t really care when my team loses against better teams. However, when my team loses against a team that proves not just better but better because my team made them appear so, I find it upsetting and this is exactly how I felt after foregoing two hours of my sleep to watch my dear nation play.

The game of soccer has evolved and every serious country is adapting. Unfortunately, Ghana keeps going backward in virtually every department except qualifying for the world cups, paying outrageous bonuses and before I forget, setting up committees.

Our local coaches must learn from coaches like Mourinho, Arsene Wenger, Anceloti and up their game.

Silas Tetteh in particular needs to improve or risk sinking into the abyss.