In 1982 Ghana won the Africa Cup for the fourth time with a local coach at the helm of affairs. Since then, in spite of all the marvelous talent we have had, Ghana has not won at that level while countries like Egypt and Cameroon have won it twice and thrice respectively. I wish to proffer for discussion some thoughts on the local/foreign coach debate and some aspects of the GFA as a management body.

Football has changed so much since our last triumph. Sadly Ghana, like the Rhesus primate, simply does not ?get it? after a quarter of a century. In the period up to 1982 when we last won the cup, football coaches had absolutely no worries about issues such as timely release of players from their clubs (foreign or local ). The national team could afford very long stretches of camping time. The media was not as vibrant and as critical as today. These days the coach?s job is not only about camping, training and tactics on the field of play but it involves managing players with huge egos, it involves having the clout to deal with reluctant coaches of clubs of key players, it involves managing an incessantly hyper-critical media. And most of all, it involves managing the interests and agenda of certain GFA executives who very often have myriad problems with players and indeed do go all out to have players excluded or benched, irrespective of their talent. But I will come to this later.

These days, besides having to cope with the complex matrix of issues aforementioned, the GFA as a body does not seem to have any high regard for any of our local coaches, even the most seasoned. However, the blame squarely lies on the shoulders of local coaches themselves. Consider that in the aftermath of the Mali 2002 debacle, it came out that the coach at the time, did not even have a contract document. I stand to be corrected but the substantive issue is that the GFA has on occasions, given the Black Stars job to local coaches without so much as a contract. There are a couple of times when local coaches have accepted to do the job but when the results were not as Ghanaians expected, promptly put out in the public domain that they did the job even without contract. Possibly because of patriotism?. If so then they should not consider themselves as professionals because professionalism has absolutely nothing to do with patriotism. That explains why Zico and Sven Goran Erickson all applauded when Japan and England scored goals against their own respectively countries. No professional coach from elsewhere would accept a job without so much as a contract document. If our local coaches thought of themselves as true professionals, in the veritable sense of the term, they would first demand contract document before taking on the job even if it was for a single match. But that leads to the other point about ad-hoc-ism.

I often hear blanket statements that players do not respect local coaches. But ad-hoc-ism does not help players to accord local coaches respect. How do you expect super-rich, big-ego people -that all foreign players become - to accord respect to any ad-hoc coach who is there today and gone tomorrow with a mere radio announcement? If it is known that a coach will be there for the next year or two, players adopt a different attitude, and in fact it is only a coach with a long term contract that can enforce discipline among players, be him local or foreign. Both Coach Attuquayefio and Coach Arday, arguably Ghana?s top coaches have all allowed themselves to be used by the GFA as stop-gap coaches in the recent past.

Currently Silas Tetteh has been appointed as a stop-gap coach. The GFA has as usual issued a statement affirming their trust in the abilities of Silas Tetteh to ?hold the fort?. Now, my beef is, and I believe for most Ghanaians and sponsors alike, if Silas is a good coach IN WHOM THE GFA TRUSTS, who is capable of holding his own against Nigeria, in a match that Ghanaians will definitely NOT want to lose, why do they not promptly sign him on, (giving him all that befits that position) and thus make him the third assistant coach to have succeeded his boss after Germany 2006? After all, Silas understudied his former boss, arguably the most successful Black Stars coach of the last 24 years, for over two years. Let me ask if the Nigeria match is a justifier for Silas and whether Doya also played a justifier before his contract? But folks, nuff said! I gotta to go to bed. It?s 2.30am already and by now much of Ghana, 4 times champion is snoring off. Not even Silas Tetteh, the ad-hoc coach is complaining about contract or being used as a stop-gap coach. So why am I? Surely, while I write, in the dead of the night, Silas himself is just so happy with it, with or without a contract, ketwaa biara nsua, man ?for chop small?. For now, the title he wears: ?Black Stars Coach? is the envy of many a coach. It is a huge huge incentive for him. But until and unless, local coaches learn to regard themselves as deserving more than just being stop-gap coaches who only ?hold the fort? for foreign professionals, no one should expect a local coach at the helm of affairs for any appreciable length of time.

Now, barely a few days after our World Cup campaign came to an end, Randy Abbey, a GFA executive member, speaking on Radio Gold, boldly and freely, said to all of us Ghanaians, that a particular player?s dream of playing for the national team is a hallucination, when this GFA executive is neither the coach nor a technical person. Imagine! He went on to impudently tell us, if the player wanted to lodge a complaint with either the President of the Republic or with Kofi Annan, he did not implicitly, give a damn. When I heard this it only explained to me why this player who scored in a number of pre-CAN 2006 friendlies, and who even as a last minute substitute, got one of the only 2 goals Ghana scored at CAN 2006 could be adjudged as not having justified his inclusion in the World Cup squad. Whereas two players who only featured in just one friendly match against a club side, in which the Black Stars were handed a humiliating 0-3 defeat, were adjudged to have justified their inclusion in the squad. It put to rest all the questions I had on my mind. It explained why/how Ghana lost Gerald Asamoah to Germany and why Ghana will continue to lose talent to other countries in the coming years.

The GFA is not a private company that could be run anyhow by its management team. It is a public institution, funded by public funds, and thus must be accountable to the public and to the myriad sponsors who put in their hard earned money, expecting the administration of football to be run professionally. Since Randy?s effusion over radio, neither the GFA President nor for that matter any leading member thereof, nor any Sports Ministry Official has reacted to it meaning that it is an acceptable practice, for any executive member to decide who plays in the national team. Kudos! It is neither the lack of talent, nor a critical media but unprofessional management and its open display on the part of both GFA and local coaches, that has caused the failure of Black Stars to win the African Cup like we did way back in 1982.

Nearly a quarter of a century ago!

The Dwashman (aka Joe Dee)
kwamoesi@yahoo.com
PS. If you want to know more about the Rhesus primate bit, or any other matter write to me.