Does Ghana Need a Foreign Coach?

Why does any country Ghana need a foreign coach?

This is a very contentious question that seems to echo all across the African continent.  While proponents of having African coaches argue that they are equal in quality to their foreign counterparts, detractors argue that the outsiders are needed to ensure that “everything, and particularly team selection, is done above board.”  But, one may ask, aren’t selections done “above board”?  The truth is that, even in the event that things are done above board (and I am not asserting that this is or is not the case), what may be more important is that the perception also be that they actually are above board. Perception, oftentimes, is more important than the reality, and some might argue that foreign coaches at least take away the perception of bias or fraud that seems so pervasive and persistent in our various selection processes.

 I apologize to those of you who, from the title of this article, thought it was about Ghana football.  This IS about all of Ghana sport, in general, and about athletics in particular.  One of my earliest coaches in America once told me, when he witnessed the haphazard nature of our selection, that athletics is the most basic of all sports.  “Running”, he said, “is something that comes naturally to all of us, even if one is not endowed with competitive speed.”  In the same vein, coach said, athletics is the easiest sport to select a team for: “you line people up, make them run, and select the first three who cross the line.”  But, “alas”, he continued, “your people in Ghana don’t even seem to be able to do that right.”   And he was correct.  That was two decades ago and, even as far back as then, we never ended up at a competition with the best (and only the best) athletes Ghana had available; there was always some chaff mixed up with the wheat…ALWAYS!

 Two decades later, unfortunately, that apparently still remains the case.  That is sad. It means we haven’t grown, we haven’t progressed, we haven’t learned any lessons; and, we still continue to waste Ghana’s precious few resources.  Yes, any time we take four athletes and two of them are not among the best four available, we have wasted national resources, even if the other two are the best two we have.  If we take four, they should be the best four we have; not numbers 1 and 2, and then 8 and 11. As serious is the fact that we also frustrate numbers 3 to 7, such that some stop training hard (as they realize that selection depends more on willingness to wash coach’s car, rather than on performance), others quit completely, and still others defect to compete for other countries and, not surprisingly, animosity builds up among our national athletes as the officials play one against the other…it should not be a surprise, then, why we have at times seemed to have so many world class sprinters and yet never produced a global level medal in the relay.  All these outcomes are linked to the unfair and underhanded bias that undergirds our selections.  Another time, ask me about the why we got disqualified in the Olympic final in the 4x100 meter relay and you’ll be surprised that the story I’ll give you is different from any of the other “explanations” you have heard from the officials.  It was a simple case of off-the-field irresponsibility that robbed us off our day in the sun.  I could go on about that, but today I want to write about something more fundamental; something that has hurt our athletics even more consistently than have isolated incidents, and something that has cost Ghana more money than it should have. 

 So who am I and what qualifies me to talk about Ghana sport…and why now?  My name is Francis Dodoo and there was a time in the past when I was a reasonably decent athlete.  I still hold the African Games record in the triple jump which, for me, is simultaneously a mark of pride and shame; shame because I don’t think records should persist beyond six or so years.  The fact that some of our national records are more than a decade old (and some are even from earlier generations) shows what a failure we have been as a collective, not being able to develop successive cohorts of athletes.  But, I am proud to say that four years ago Andrew Owusu broke my more-than-a-decade-old national record; I say “proud” because, as I alluded to above, I considered myself a failure after my record had been on the books for more than six years, because it meant I had not been successful in nurturing the next generation of triple jumpers. His record, then, affirmed my contribution to the DEVELOPMENT of our sport.  I am sure Andrew will tell you that I coached him…yes, I am confident he would say that, and that is what makes me most proud.  Beyond being an athlete, I also got invited to six national team camps before I left Ghana at the age of 20 (athletics, volleyball, hockey, cricket, handball, and basketball).  I may never have boxed, but I have been in sufficient national camps at African, Commonwealth, or Olympic Games to have some basic understanding of how their association works.  I may not play soccer, but I have had the opportunity to try to negotiate a sponsorship contract for the GFA when, in 1992 at the Barcelona Olympics, my then-sponsor, Diadora, wanted to give Ghana soccer a better deal than we had with Adidas.  Again, this story is not about that, but suffice it to say that it became clear that the GFA did not appear interested in even legitimately receiving and considering another offer; that, too, is a story for another day.  My point in this self-serving paragraph is that I have a history with Ghana sport which I think qualifies me to talk about it.  I have also competed for Ghana in various sports for the 20 years leading up to 1996, so I do know Ghana sports and the internal nature or workings of our sports bodies. and I can pontificate on what is wrong therein.  I can also be a part of the solution.

 So, “why haven’t you taken so long to speak up?”  Well, I have talked about these things with the confines of our athletic association, with the result being that once my competitive “star” dimmed, and I was no longer the “top” athlete, I was disposable because I was deemed “troublesome.”  Some of our current national coaches have been known to tell some of the younger athletes that they are in good favor until they latch their prospects to Francis Dodoo’s.  Sounds threatening to the young athletes, doesn’t it?  But, that is what speaking up against injustice earned me.  Others who’s abilities dimmed as much as (and some even more than) mine still managed to keep their places on our teams.  This is one clue about how your national teams and national monies are used; to select athletes who ask no questions, even when the system is corrupted.  For me, the price I paid was fine with me because I don’t think anyone including myself should be on our teams if they are not athletically “worthy” of a spot. Plus, honor comes before anything else, as far as I am concerned, and I would rather be respected (and not selected) than grateful (and be selected without merit).  So, my speaking out is nothing new, although I can do so more openly today.  Why so?  Simply because in those days I felt compromised by what I saw as a conflict of interest; as long as I remained a competitive athlete who was viable for selection, I thought it was inappropriate to make the crusade as public as I am willing to now.  I thought it would be difficult for readers to not think I was writing all this because I sought selection.  Why didn’t I speak out publicly about this last year, after non-qualified people were fraudulently included in the Sydney Olympic team only to get there and not be allowed to compete (and thereby waste Ghana’s resources)?  Here is another set of cards I must lay on the table: His Excellency the President is my mother’s brother, and I have been hesitant about making any public statements about anything because I have the utmost respect for him and would not, in any way, want to be a source of embarrassment to him. 

 Why speak up now?  Well, when the latest plans for Ghana’s participation at the Commonwealth Games were published yesterday, is suddenly dawned on me that this would actually be something he needs (and wants) to know about, given how much of our scarce resource the endeavor is going to consume.  I just realized that I would be doing Ghana better service holding the athletics establishment accountable to the President’s zero-tolerance call.  We need transparency and we need accountability in Ghana athletics, and we need both of those NOW!  Furthermore, I have just been flattered by the current generation of Ghanaian athletes who recently voted me chairman of an athletes association, thereby giving me the mandate to represent them in such discourses.  I could not longer watch from the stands; I had to speak up.

 So, how do we introduce transparency and accountability into our sports?  Easy!  It starts with our selections.  I remember when two decades ago, in national volleyball camp, the night before travel, because officials couldn’t announce the selected few, everyone in camp would be asked to have their suitcases packed and ready.  At dawn the selected few would be quietly woken up for departure from Winneba.  If you woke up on your accord and saw sunlight it meant, alas, you had been left behind…not selected.  That’s an example of officials not being able to publicly announce the selection, probably because it wasn’t all above board.  Then there are the hockey stories of players being changed at the airport, or even when a departed flight had to return to Accra for technical reasons.  In 2000, one of the NSC’s current administrators reported, as the athletics team left training camp in Holland for Australia, that Ghana had received “special dispensation” by the international federation to proceed to Sydney with at least one of the athletes who had not met the Olympic qualifying standard because presumably he was “so close to the standard.”  Why would the international federation concern themselves with who any country decides to fly to Australia?  As far as they are concerned you can fly as many people as you want to Australia, since it is the country that foots the bill anyway; if the athletes haven’t qualified they can’t compete.  It’s as simple as that.  Why then would our own officials announce in the media that special dispensation had been granted?  I suspect to fool the unsuspecting Ghanaian public, which is not aware of the international federation’s position on these matters.  Later, when the media report from the Olympics came out indicating that some of the athletes we had paid to take had not even been allowed to compete (and had thus contributed to wastage of national resources), the same administrators came back to “explain” away their fault by saying that the athletes had given them fake performances (is it becoming clear why some people say a foreign coach is necessary?).  Well, four years before that, in Atlanta, we also took athletes who were not qualified and were therefore not allowed to compete.  Sounds like a pattern, eh?  Certainly is, and we can go back to earlier times if you want: I can tell you the circumstances under which Ernest Obeng, our top sprinter in that day, was inappropriately disgraced by our officials (I was there, fiilifili!), but you guessed right, in that “that’s a story for another day.”  Then, of course, is the matter of fictitious names showing up on team rosters, but...that, too, is a story for another day.  But, I am getting side-tracked again.

What do we have to do?  We have to be open and transparent in our selection criteria to ensure that we take no one but our best athletes, AND those who are in-form THIS year.  And we have to be truthful to the Ghanaian public, rather than misrepresent the performances of athletes in the press so that Ghanaians think the rightful athletes are being selected.  If we can only afford to take two athletes, they should be our best two; if we can afford 12, they should be our 12 best.  That way, even if we don’t win a medal, we know that we didn’t frivolously waste our national resources, by taking lesser talent than we actually have. 

So, we have the Commonwealth Games coming up and our officials have come out loudly to state that they are selecting the best seven.  Yet, the list they have come up with is hardly “the best”.  As Christian Nsiah writes on the GhanaHomePage website, of the seven athletes who have been pre-selected, there are questions about how “qualified” many of them are to be counted as being part of our best seven athletes, or even whether they are the seven who have the best shot to win medals.  He reports the following performances, which I have been able to confirm, for the seven pre-selected athletes, and anyone in Ghana can do the same using the websites at the bottom of this article:

• *Abu Duah--100m, 200m --Name does not appear on the IAAF rankings (top 50)
• *Harry Adu-Mfum--100m, 200m --Name does not appear on the IAAF rankings (top 50)
• *Kenneth Andam--100m, 200m --Has not competed this year, Name not on world list
• *Aziz Zakari --100m, 200m---Has not competed this year (will have his first competition     
•       in May in Osaka, Japan)
• *Ernest Osei--Name does not appear on the IAAF rankings (top 50)
• *Vida Anim --100m, 200m --Not listed on IAAF website (but has a hand time of 11.00)
• *Margaret Simpson—Javelin -- Not in the top 40 in the world
• *Margaret Simpson—Heptathlon --Has not competed yet this year

At the same time, our four best Ghanaian performers THIS YEAR have been excluded:

• Samuel Okantey--Triple Jump--Ranked 20th in the world (indoor 2002)
• Andrew Owusu --Triple Jump --Ranked 8th in the world (outdoor as of 17/04/2002)
• Christian Nsiah--100m, 200m-----Ranked 19th and 13th respectively (as of 17/04/2002)
• Monica Twum--100m, 200m-----Ranked 33rd in the world, 100m (as of 17/04/2002)

One could speculate about whether some of these names are excluded because they have tried to hold our officials accountable for some shenanigans in the past.  I know some have; they can tell you the threats that they have received from officials since last year because they spoke up about accountability.  I am sure if someone queries the officials about them, they may be labeled as lacking discipline.  Although the discipline of sportsmen and women in Ghana certainly remains a valid concern, that excuse has also been the traditional way that legitimate questioning of impropriety is used to kick out some of us.  If a Ghanaian official ever complains to you about an athlete’s indiscipline, ask them to give you details of what he or she has done.  All I care about here is that, if it is seven athletes that we are able to afford, we ensure that we take our seven best athletes.  That is all I ask. That is all I have ever asked.  If any other athlete wants to go, they should be prepared to pick up the cost of their own participation.  If they are qualified, but don’t rank in our top 7 (when we can only afford to take 7), then they should still be allowed to go if they can find a sponsor to pick up the costs.  And what about the relay, one would ask?  Well, I think whenever we have three sprinters qualified, then it justifies adding a couple of other bodies to compose a relay team; I don’t think that is worthwhile if you have only two qualified sprinters, but that is my subjective opinion, which is open to discussion. 

The acting chief executive of the sports council has come out to justify the selection of the seven athletes.  In doing so, he has made the typical inaccurate statements that we are used to.  One example should suffice here.  It references his comments about Margaret Simpson’s selection, because he was inordinately explicit about her performance.  If you do not know the facts, you would easily be swayed by his assertiveness.  That is what they have relied on in the past; the lack of information that the average member of the public has about the specific performances of our athletes.  In saying all this, I would like readers to understand that this is not about Margaret Simpson.  I have never met the woman and, although I am impressed with her development over the last couple of years, I also had questions about whether she was one of our four best athletes, when we took only 4 to last year’s World Championships.  Perhaps, she IS one of our seven best and deserves to be at the Commonwealth Games.  My point here is not even that there are currently some unselected Ghanaian athletes who rank above her; it is simply that her case evidences the misrepresentations upon which our selections are based. 

In announcing our Commonwealth plans, Dr. the chief executive stated that "(t)he situation whereby many athletes are sent on international competitions but are not able to win any medals would henceforth be a thing of the past". I submit that our athletes’ inability to attain the laurels that they should at major competitions is more the fault of officialdom and organization than it is the fault of the athletes themselves.   Frankly, it is absurd to think that athletes would sabotage their own performances at the major competitions, the same venues which could translate into them attaining glory and reasonable measure of financial independence.  He further stated that: "Margaret Simpson (who) is rated 12th in the Commonwealth and has past 6000 points in heptathlon for the women's division".  A quick visit to the website (http://www.tilastopaja.net/db/at.asp?Searchname=margaretsimpson&Sex=W&Year=2002), which gives her lifetime achievements, as well as her performances by year, indicates clearly that she her personal best mark is 5836 points from last year.  It also alerts you that she hasn’t competed in a heptathlon in 2002.  Now, 5836 is a decent mark, but it certainly isn’t true that she has “past (sic) 6000 points).  Other misrepresentations can be pointed out, but I believe the point is made.  No chief executive should be making false statements about their institution, and I am not referring to the previous statement that one of our jumpers had received “special dispensation” by the international federation to proceed to Sydney.

 Frankly, there are two selection steps that should be taken to ensure the goal he is articulated. First, select the meritorious athletes and, second, ensure they have good preparation. Officials of Ghana sports and athletics have done neither in the past, and the "smoke and mirrors" acts that they pull to deceive Ghanaians will no longer work, thanks to the internet and other possibilities folks have to respond immediately to their shenanigans.  After selection, the officials have to make the proper preparation arrangements, not those that facilitate their leaving Ghana themselves.  It is counterproductive for athletes who have been under the tutelage of one coach or another, in Texas, Tennessee, or Virginia to be asked to return to train on Ghana’s difficult tartan track and be subjected to the all the frustrations inherent of camps in Ghana.  At the same time, it is inappropriate to have the athletes who have performed well under a coach’s wing (for months or years) to be asked to spend the last eight weeks with a set of national coaches who have little know-how regarding the athletes training and progression of the current year.  In a team sport, or for the relay, the argument could be made that some camp is necessary (the American relay teams have two or three very short camps, which all their sprinters have to attend to develop teamwork, but they are hardly asked to be away from their principal coach for the most critical period leading up to the competition).  Besides, our coaches have been known to show up at camps without batons and go for weeks without spending any of the imprest to buy one.  There are many examples of this.  So, why should we waste national resources on training tours that are actually counterproductive?  We shouldn’t accept the officials’ claims that these tours facilitate monitoring; yeah right!  When was the last time we sent an athlete home after a training tour because they were off-form?  Besides, even for Sydney when athletes hadn’t qualified weren’t they ferreted on to the Olympics because of “special dispensation?”  And these camps are often not in the ideal place with access to all the facilities and healthcare we need?  Were coaches not almost stranded in Holland for non-payment of costs?  I am sure if we put out minds together we can end these counterproductive camps and come up with a more responsible and cost-effective approach that also actually helps our athletes improve or maintain their form in the critical last days before the major competitions.  Why anyone would want to camp in Holland, a country known for its wet and dreary weather immediately prior to a major competition in a place like Sydney is beyond me. 

Good preparation and proper selection should help us restore our respectability in athletics.  It seems to be working for Senegal and Cameroon, among others, and I don’t think they have more money than us.  So, it really doesn’t come down to the amount of money, although I think we could use the little money we have much more effectively.  The key point is that whatever the criteria, they should be available to ALL athletes the previous year or, at the latest, at the beginning of the relevant year.  That way, everything would be “flee and fair”.  It is too late to do this for this July’s Commonwealth Games.  But, it is not too late to make sure that we hold the official’s to making the best decisions for Ghana; in making sure that our best athletes go, we will be minimizing the odds that we have wasted national resources.  If I may paraphrase His Excellency, the President, we should have “zero tolerance” for any one who wants to corrupt our system, which in this case is the selection process.  Now, this we need to address today; it can not wait “for another day.”  What is preached in Ghana’s politics deserves to be applied to her athletics! 

Anyone who wants to see the CURRENT (2002) performances of Ghanaian athletes can visit any of the following websites:

• http://www.tilastopaja.net/top20.asp (outdoor 2002)
• http://www.iaaf.org/Results/index.asp?Filename=/Results/lists/2002/Outdoor/G/index.html
• http://www.ghanaathletics.com