Chris Hughton

 (This is the concluding part of an article published last week)

The latest heartbreak has even called into ques­tion Chris Hughton’s (Coach) competence to steer the team to a successful AFCON in January and to also secure Ghana a World Cup qualification berth.

Seriously, fans are wit­nessing a very porous Black Stars team shipping in more goals than they score.

Surprisingly, the deteri­orating performance of the Black Stars is at a period where there seem to be an upsurge of Ghanaian play­ers performing creditably in some of the major leagues around the world.

Mohammed Kudus seem to be fast establishing himself at West Ham United in the English Premier League just like Thomas Partey who is considered a pivot at Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal.

The contingents from Ger­many, Spain, Italy and other places are all giving very good accounts of themselves but their performance for the national team has brought the technical team under the spotlight as well as the GFA which has constantly been at the receiving end of accusa­tions of interfering in player selection.

The performance of some of these players do not sug­gest that they are the best at the disposal of Chris Hughton and his assistants.

If that was so, then Gha­na is in deep talent crisis.

With the AFCON and World Cup qualifiers fast approaching, handlers of the team have very little time to negotiate the difficult curves they face in building a formidable team that can restore the fans pride.

Patience is key in build­ing winning teams but the competitive world of foot­ball gives credence to the saying that “Time and tide waits for no man” so no country or federation would wait for Ghana’s team building process to take shape.

It was gratifying persuading a few top notch players to switch nationalities in Ghana’s favour.

Through that process, there was a Tariq Lamptey ignoring England to don the Black Stars jersey, Inaki Williams ditching Spain to play for Ghana and others.

But it is taking too much time for them to switch into full gear.

Inaki, for instance, is yet to nail down a place in the Black Stars team. Apart from the inability to bang in the goals like he does for La Liga outfit, Atletico Bilbao with his brother who kept faith with Spain, he is yet to make the top striker position his.

He is not the only for­eign based player struggling. Dennis Odoi started compet­itively but subsequent games did not go well with him. His situation was made worse by an injury that kept him out for a few matches.

Tariq Lamptey still look promising, putting up a couple of inspiring perfor­mances for Brighton and Hove Albion in the EPL even in an unfamiliar left full back position but is also yet to shine for the Black Stars.

Other well estab­lished performers like Thomas Partey, Abdul Salis Ahmed, Baba Iddrissu, Antoine Semenyo and Kamal­deen Sulemana etc. have become inconsistent with the Black Stars in recent days but have maintained their high standards at their respective clubs, raising concerns about commitment and dedication to the Stars course.

In the same manner the FA did the ‘try your luck’ with them based on the faith the technical handlers had in them, I implore the FA/Technical handlers to also give greater attention to the local players who are ready to offer that sacrifice, commit­ment and dedication lacking in the game of the foreign ‘angels.’

Even if it backfires, we should be ready to go again, after all, we have been with the overly pampered and mo­tivated elites who we devote a chunk of resources on and get little or nothing to show for.

Until that bridge was crossed, the grumblings, cantankerousness and blame game would continue.

By Andrew Nortey