The national senior male soccer team, the Black Stars, is in the news again.
Our Stars crashed into the World Cup party with little hope from Ghanaians, since it was not all smooth sailing in grabbing one of the five tickets allocated to Africa. And after three group marches in FIFA Qatar 2022, they crashed out.
How can we have a formidable team? I will touch on only two things.
Firstly, the Stars need a counsellor or a psychologist, to help motivate the minds of players and charge them up in matches.I am sure we have one, if not the FA must answer to this.
Both Ghana and Argentina lost their first group matches and won their second. Both teams went into their third group matches placing second with three points. And both teams had their captains, missing penalties in their crucial last group match. This is where the similarities end.
After both captains missing their penalties, Argentina went on to beat their opponents, Poland 2-0 to top the group, while Ghana succumbed to a 0-2 trashing by Uruguay and to place last in the group. Why was it so? What boosted the Argentines up and pumped excess of adrenaline into the players muscles and made them successfully fight off the danger of exiting tournament? And what hormone made the Black Stars lose hope, instead of going for broke after that penalty miss?
Do we have professionals at all? In the 2005 UEFA Champions League final, Liverpool was down by 3-0 to AC Milan in the first half. The England club drew in the second, took the game to penalties and won the trophy. To professionals, it is not over until it is over.
In my opinion, the GFA has not been up to its duty of developing the sports in this country. Its role is to oversee the development of soccer at all levels, male and female at local, senior and junior levels.
Though on record our best performing soccer teams are the junior male teams who have successfully won world cups and the entire groups of female teams who are leaders in Africa, the GFA seems more engrossed in the management of the senior national team, the Black Stars, who, have never won any trophy for forty years.
The GFA is not in any hurry to revive our local league, where our national players are bred from. The Ghana Premier league is dead, compared to what it used to be some decades ago. Today our once feared local champions get kicked out of international competitions by novices with such impudence.
Our Black Stars conquered Africa, four times with local coaches and without the compliment of professional players from abroad. With their arrival, we keep sinking.
The GFA seems interested in selling off budding stars and making quick money instead of polishing first, them to become world stars. These raw gems are sold to low key teams abroad for a pittance, only to rot away.
Nineteen-year-old Matthew Anim Cudjoe, described as gift to the nation and a national treasure like Messi, was rated€25,000.00 and sold to Scottish side Dundee United.
This is one of our problems that is not addressed by the GFA, the way it should.
The poor performance of the Black Stars must be placed on the doorsteps of the FA. They have a batch of Ghanaian professional players, playing abroad and so whether these players are fit to play or not, once their positions are not contested for, they come down to play in international competitions, just to better their CVs and nothing else.
If we had a very competitive local league, like it used to be over thirty-five years ago, our players abroad will not feel that their positions in the national team are their bonafide properties. Some come down here and play as if they do not want to dirty their boots, but in their teams abroad they will put out their necks to be chopped off, just so victory is won.
In my opinion, and since FAs are autonomous bodies, which FIFA warns that they should not be touched, government and the people of Ghana should make our GFA start operating like the FAs in Europe and the Americas.
The GFA should find ways and means of generating money to fund preparations toward international competitions and when the teams qualify, the people of Ghana through the government will give them something small to top up what they have. Should they earn any money during competition, they are liable to be taxed.
The US gave $2 million to Team USA, in FIFA 2014, Ghana spent over $20 million not to add that late transfer of $3 million, sent directly to Brazil.
The truth is, more than $2 million was spent on Team USA by US Soccer Federation. Here in Ghana our FA will produce a budget seeking tens of millions of dollars to invest into an area, we never get any return from. We need such monies for social interventions.
GFA must now operate like other FAs in Europe and Americas who generate their own monies.It is about time, it sat up and do real work.
And one thing our coaches should be allowed free hand to select and field players they think are capable of executing the job.
Hon Daniel Dugan
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect The Chronicle’s stance.
