Black Stars And Kurt

The national team finds itself in a very difficult situation ahead of the Mundial. In fairness to Kurt, the team have been faltering before he took office. So what is going on with former powerhouse in Africa football? The team looked a shadow of their former selves recently – and that not the only parallel.

In the past, Ghana’s potential for producing great football stars is considered almost limitless, and other nations take inspiration from us to develop their own. For decades, Black Stars were perennial favourites when it came to major international tournaments. Now that charm is gone!

There are no longer outstanding players like Mohammed Polo, Abdul Razak, Opoku Afriyie, Adolf Armah, Emmanuel Quarshie, Michael Essien, Stephen Appiah, Abedi Pele, Tony Yeboah, Shamo Quaye, Joe Debrah and all the others from a distant era. Ghana have struggled recently to create the iconic players we have been used to seeing at the Afcon down the years. So who do young Ghanaian players learn from?

In game after game the team have looked disjointed, without clear strategies for progressing the ball down the field, and suffering from the possibility of being both outplayed and outnumbered in central midfield.

There is no end in sight for this poor performances.

For two successive Afcon tournaments, the team failed to progress beyond the group stage. And also failed to qualify for Morocco 2025/26 tournament. Indeed the team is in deep crisis.

In fact, there is huge crisis in Ghanaian coaching too. It is hard to produce good coaches when there is no time to train and no job security. That is the reality of domestic Ghanaian football, and helps explain why almost all of the senior national team coaches are foreigners.

The Kurt’s administration is not investing enough to change the rapid decline of coaching standards in the country. There were great coaches like; Osam Doudou, Jones Attuquayefio, Sam Addy, Ibrahim Sunday, Malik Jabir and others. And the of lack of good coaches have seriously affected big clubs like Hearts and Kotoko in all competitions.

The appointment of Carlos Queiroz will surely add nothing to the Black Stars. This is a manager who gained fame for winning 1989 and 1991 under-20 World championships with Portugal. Thereafter he hasn’t enjoyed good spells with the big teams. Being a deputy manager for Manchester United doesn’t mean he was the boss! Truth be told, he is a “yesterday coach”, and not good for underperforming team.

Once again GFA have failed to address the mistake they made with the outlandish appointment of Otto Addo as the team boss.
Addo’s departure after two years concludes a bizarre and potentially hugely expensive episode that leaves fingers pointing firmly in the direction of GFA president.

Today, Senegal are the red-hot favourites in Africa football. If any side in the continent will progress at the world cup tournament count on them, in the past year or so, they have beating Brazil, England and others convincingly while Black Stars continues to foundered. The team have been in a debilitating slump for sometime now, only a pragmatist manager can resuscitate stars to its glorious past.

Unless GFA takes coaching project to the next level from under-14,17,20, and even send some of them abroad for further training, the situation will continue to be bad. Spain were once regarded as perennial underachievers now they are winning machine, and this is not by chance but carefully focused on coaches at all levels of the game.

It is time Kurt’s administration accept the reality that Ghana is no longer a powerhouse and take serious measures to save the game from total collapse.

By Reagan Michael Fianko