Black Stars: Will Turkeys vote for Christmas?

One of the many positives from the sacking of Coach Milovan Rajevac was the wholesale recognition that on its own it was not in any way considered to be the solutions to the many problems the Ghana Football Association are currently facing and has been facing for quite a few decades.

It appears the general public can no longer be hood winked any more as they called for the dismissal/resignation of the Black Stars Technical Team, the three-man committee led by Dr. Randy Abbey that selected Milovan Rajavec as the successor to CK Akunnor, the Executive Council and Management Committee of the Black Stars and the GFA Capo himself, Kurt Okraku.

However, apart from the Coach and the Technical Team, the reach of the general public through the Ministry of Youth & Sports cannot extend as far and probably accounted for the extremely haughty responses from the GFA Capo and other members of the Executive Council.

No matter how badly the general public may feel bruised by the events of the 2021 AFCON only a majority of the membership of the GFA could determine whether or not the length of tenure of any one of those running the GFA should come to an end and by the looks of things they aren’t among those who are complaining! So just chill out and let’s continue to watch the space and trust the process because the turkey will never vote for Christmas!

Another one of the positives was that Government ordered the GFA to dismiss the coach even though the GFA were insisting that this would technically not be the right time to do so. I will support them on that concern because you don’t need to be technically inclined to understand the reason why a change of coach at this time was suicidal. But the positive was that they were being told to do so by Government who at times can’t differentiate between different colors much less! In summary non-technical Technocrats advising non-technical Administrators.

If the GFA had the money to continue paying a salary to Milovan I am confident that they would have ignored the Ministers advice and begun planning for the FIFA World Cup play-offs but that was not the case and so they had to play the tune and dance to it, to what may well turn out to be their detriment!

This is what you have to contend with when you voluntarily surrender your autonomy to the Government of the day because of the inability to commercialize football and make it pay.

They end up being coerced by non-technical people to make decisions that cut across the broad aim and objectives of the GFA whilst simultaneously making technical decisions without consulting those within the fraternity that are more suitably qualified to make a more informed decision. Those set of circumstance represent a disaster all round yes, 360 degrees.

We are hooked on appearing at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, no sense of reasoning will dissuade anyone from thinking anything different so now there must be a semblance of a preparation, planning and that begins with the appointment of a new coach and technical team. Some say a “stop gap” coach but I disagree because from what I have been told the last coach was only on a 1-year contract so he was also a “stop gap” coach!

So, what they are saying is they want another one! They have had three stop gap coaches in as many years or even less and that should have taught everyone a very important lesson which is you cannot run Senior National Team football aimlessly like that!

Once a coach is appointed and directed to ensure that the Ghana Black Stars qualify for the FIFA World Cup as the sole basis for his appointment that’s when you know nothing has changed and further lessons have gone unnoticed. In appointing a new coach, they must look beyond the World Cup qualifiers because there is life after non-qualification.

It is not prudent to be thinking in terms of one competition after the other that time of planning rarely provides you with the deliverables.

We need long-term thinking, long term planning whereby winning a the AFCON competition would actually end up being a secondary objective as the primary focus would be placed on developing coaching, officiating and players and more importantly beginning it all from Grass Roots.

The investment into the Senior National Team must be directed to the local leagues. It is from there that A Lionel Messi and or Christiano Ronaldo can be found if that’s what we are looking for and nowhere else. It would also prevent our players from thinking that a place like Iraq for example, is where the grass is greener!