Sports
Weep not for Black Stars, Appiah (Final part)
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The Black Stars
Coaches have gone and come yet the Stars remain the Stars we have known under the previous managers.
The same applies to the playing staff which has seen generations come and gone, but not been able to add to the four AFCONs won by the 1963, 1965, 1978 and 1982 year groups.
What is yet to be tried is the advice to restart the whole process with a plan that will be centred on developing local players and making them the core of the team.
This appears a gamble the ‘football people’ are not ready to take for the fear of failing to earn qualifications or being vilified and lampooned by the fans.
But to serve the FA a reminder, this is a perfect time to embrace this idea.
It is because Ghana has gotten to a stage where fans are fed up with the players for their regular disappointment.
In fairness, this should be the beginning of a completely new rebuild with focus on the local players who already possesses the demands of Kurt Okraku. The only reason it has not been considered is the lack of faith in them.
What is needed for them will be patience from fans. This may have been tried in the past without the success rate expected because it would take a lot of time for the team to gel.
Former Black Stars defender, Shilla Illiasu, made a similar call after the match, calling for a development plan to follow to build a new team.
In Illiasu’s view, it would be in the best interest of the FA to abandon the quest to qualify for competitions in the next five years; a period within which recommendations in the plan would be implemented.
“Going forward, I think the time has come for every Ghanaian to let us understand that there is a problem with the team and in order to build a solid team, we need to forget about AFCON and World Cup and to put together a plan; maybe a five year development plan and let the whole country understand that there is a problem with the team.”
Illiasu has hit the nail right on it head. It is surely the way to go to stop going around in circles with players who have regularly shown that they lack the quality needed to get Ghana the results.
It may sound a tough call but without the luxury of foreign based players for Sudan, Kwesi Appiah has shown the way in a similar fashion; building a team consisting of home based players.
If Appiah was asked to implement this in Ghana about five years ago, he would have been among those to brush aside the idea.
But in a country with few options, he has built a team which is a point away from qualifying to an AFCON at the expense of Ghana.
Of course, that does not automatically transform Appiah into the best coach on the continent; at least he has proven that one can build a winsome team with players plying their trade on home soil.
If at a point foreign based players showed promise and wants to join, such a player must be made to fight for a role.
For now all seem lost for Ghana. For Sudan, Kwesi Appiah and his Ghanaian assistant, Ignatius Kwame Osei-Fosu, and their charges have every reason to savour the moment. They should not weep for Ghana because his blueprint full of belief in the abilities of local based players can be implemented.
Appiah’s has worn a sombre mood obviously due to his affiliation to Ghana but as a professional with a greater understanding of the game, he has every reason to celebrate with Sudanese.
The rest would be left to the ‘football people’ to take a major decision to halt the downward spiral of our game.
By Andrew Nortey
Students and management staff were joined by keep fit enthusiasts to partake in the 2026 edition of the Street Academy annual health walk held last Saturday.
It was held on the theme: “Feet on the Street, Hope in Motion.”
The event also brought opinion leaders from some of the Ga communities, sports men and women including former world boxing champion, Joseph Agbeko, and children from the academy and neighbouring communities.
The event was originally slated for July 18 but postponed due to President John Dramani Mahama’s declaration of July 17-18 as National Clean-up Day.
That development did not affect the event in any way as participants, mostly cladded in yellow outfits, turned up in their numbers.
Spurred on by brass band music, the walk went through some of the principal streets of the capital, drawing more crowds from the communities it went through before returning to the Accra Arts Centre, the starting point.
Participants then went through another exhaustive aerobic session before they were refreshed.
Addressing the participants, Dr Ataa Lartey, the Founder and Executive Director of the Academy, commended them for turning out in their numbers for the walk, which he described as an event to enable the children and other guests to exercise.
Secondly, the event, he stated, was also to raise awareness about the plight of needy and underprivileged children, promote healthy living, and advocate the importance of basic education.
By Spectator Sports Reporter
Usually, when a coach is tasked to build a formidable national team for a major tournament, he does so with the best players available to him, with a special focus on local talents.
But where such local talents are not available or are unconvincing, the coach is allowed to supplement with foreign based players.
In this case, these players scouted beyond the borders of the country must be in top form and prove beyond reasonable doubt that they are far better than the locals.
Again, such players must also show some commitment and dedication to the national call.
A coach can however, decide to ignore this system in cases where there is insufficient time for the exercise, when there is a policy that forbids him from inviting certain crop of players, or if he finds himself in a position where he has no say on the players selected for him to use.
Recently, Coach Maxwell Konadu was tasked to build a Black Satellites team for the ongoing WAFU B U-20 championship in Cote d’Ivoire, a tournament which also serves as a qualifier for the 2027 Africa U-20 Championship which Ghana is hosting.
With that status, the Black Satellites become automatic candidates and rightfully, the focus should have been on a team to be groomed for the ultimate.
The sub-regional tournament did not actually oblige Konadu to rely on foreign based players, most of who are on pre-season assignments with their respective clubs.
Also, Konadu was under no misperception about quotas to allot local or foreign based players. It was very clear that the tourney was for the locals.
With this background, he is believed to have selected the players that formed the team that represented Ghana at the championship.
Sadly, Konadu and his boys disappointed woefully at the championship, failing to march his words against performance on the field.
Exiting just after the group stage came with little surprise. That has been the pattern for the national juvenile teams in their respective championships for now.
What left tongues wagging, however, was Konadu’s claim that lessons from the championship would help build a “stronger and more competitive squad for next year’s TotalEnergies CAF U-20 Africa Cup of Nations.”
The confusion lied in his admission that “the squad which competed in Côte d’Ivoire is unlikely to be the same one that represents Ghana at the 2027 TotalEnergies CAF U-20 Africa Cup of Nations.”
It would have made a lot of sense to rather build a team that uses the WAFU B Championships as a platform to prepare for the main championship next year, than selecting a team that in his own words is unlikely to compete.
This is a very common feature in other jurisdictions. The English FA, for instance, would have used an Under-18 team for the WAFU B, knowing the impact that experience would have on the team.
So clearly, the experience and lessons Konadu spoke about would be non-existent and would not help the team in anyway because if he happened to be in charge of the Ghana 2027 championship team, he would be supervising an entirely new team.
From where I sit, Konadu and whoever played any role in assembling this team got everything wrong and must be reminded that there would be no assurances that the next team would excel in the championship.
By Andrew Nortey
