FEATURE: How can we trust the Process!

By Nana Kwaku Agyemang

The dust is yet to settle on the just ended 2022 U’17, West African Football Union B Tournament (WAFU) that was held at the Cape Coast Stadium.  Nigeria (The Golden Eaglets) emerged comfortable and worthy winners with Burkina Faso as Runners Up and Ghana and Cote D’Voire respectfully earning third and fourth places for their endeavor.  The winner and runner up booked their ticket in the Africa U’17 Championship scheduled to take place in Algeria and it is from there that the countries representing Africa at this level will emerge to feature in the FIFA U’17 World Cup to be held in Peru next year.

The Eaglets will be flying beyond the Ghana Black Starlets who were quite frankly abysmal when they faced Nigeria in the opening fixture where they were thumped 4-1!  There was no antidote to the wave after wave assault on the Starlets defence of which the eventual capitulation was a matter of a very short space of time. 

What was most disturbing of that performance was the response of the Head Coach of the team who blamed it upon the fact that three weeks to the tournament losing 20 from his squad of 28 players due to them failing the MRI Test!  When I heard the explanation and then read it in the following days to come it dawned upon me that there was nothing serious about the scouting and indeed the preparation of this squad at all. 

I stand to be corrected but there was at least a minimum of 12 solid months of scouting and camping of these players in preparation for this tournament with the prospect of qualifying to the African U’17b Championship in Algeria and the FIFA U’17 World Cup in Peru but you would never guess that was the aim considering what Coach Paa Kwesi Fabian disclosed to the rest of the world in the post-match presser.  With three weeks to go to the tournament he was forced to select 20 new players to represent Ghana with the vain hope of excelling beyond this tournament as winners or as runners up.  Surely the entire technical team knew that this would just be a pipe dream not to mention the Management Committee too! Fraud on a large scale and they had all been caught!

I shook my head because there was no way that team could ever recover even if the rest of their opponents were on crutches, because here was a team defying all the odds with no time to know themselves and adapt to the tactics and formation of the coach in order to face sides that were well prepared and not facing any hitches with just three weeks to go to the tournament. It all just begs the question about what exactly was going on during all that time?  To begin with no one in that technical team has been paid since day one and none of them have any contract to live by so it is as if they were volunteers that one should not really expect much from.  As they say if you pay peanuts you will surely end up with monkeys! I remember several years back with the same coach in charge of theU’17’s declaring that he had to take money from the players Agents/Managers to survive and so inadvertently that meant that the players selected were those whose managers could afford to pay. Hardly the best way to select players to represent a country don’t you think?

With the same scenario prevalent today it is easy to conclude that this is the strategy being employed now, even if it isn’t! When you even check out the players that were initially selected and those that make up the squad now out of the 16 Regions Ghana boasts of less than half of those regions are represented with the players that make up the squad.  I think it is fair to say that this squad in no way shape or form represents the best that Ghana has to offer at this level with the vast majority of the players coming from Greater Accra and its immediate surrounding environs. Considering 20 from the original 28-man squad failed the MRI it makes me wonder if the technical team can’t tell the difference between a kid and an adult!

Well as if that wasn’t bad enough the Ghana Black Maidens U’17 have also had their wings clipped by FIFA as they have been banned for two consecutive FIFA Competitions also for age cheating which amounts to 4 years of non- participation! FIFA also fined the Ghana Football Association the sum of $100,000 for the dastardly act too.  I have yet to read the full ruling but the case was centered around two players namely Rasheedat Sahadu and Nancy Amoh, both of whom were given extended bans for their role in the saga.

Ironically Ghana failed to qualify for the FIFA U’17 World Cup anyway as they were eliminated in the second leg when the faced Morocco despite the fact that they went to Morocco with a two-goal advantage.  The Moroccans came back from that deficit and defeated the Maidens in a penalty shoot-out.  You would have thought the Moroccans would have been satisfied with that but even before that match they had complained about how as many as 6 and more maidens appeared suspiciously older. Sensing danger the Management team and the Technical team decided to withdraw some of the older players just in case.  It wasn’t until after the Moroccans had dispatched the Black Maidens that they made a formal complaint to Confederation of African Football (CAF) and the rest they say is history!

The Ghana Football Association had the option of representing themselves when the case was first raised at CAF but for some unknown reason they never made an appearance and so the case was heard in their absence.  Instead of making an appearance we were told that the Moroccans were talking rubbish and we were fed other narratives of Moroccan ill-treatment during the second leg but we never made any formal complaints about that!  Now we are being told that Ghanaian media men and women were the real source of the players ages, divulging it to the Moroccan Football Authorities. 

Although it is not too late to appeal what would be the basis for any appeal now? If there was a basis for an appeal why didn’t the Technical Team and the Management Team ensure that the GFA was ably represented in the first place?  This will be the first explanation they will have to give before delving into the facts of the matter.  As the GFA now begins moving with urgency and stealth in my opinion it’s a face-saving exercise of trivial pursuit because there is no plausible reason one can offer for not having a defence in the first place, especially when one is claiming innocence!

Don’t you wonder why is it that we are always falling foul when it comes to competitions that are age restricted? Why do we always consider it important to cheat when and where possible? If there was an MRI test for our U’20’s trust me you would see that the majority of those players male and female are not U’20 players at all.  We are extremely lucky that this is not the case or we would have been kicked in the butt on that too!

There is clearly something wrong with the GFA structures because whoever finds themselves in the position of Management Committee or within the Technical team the value is basically the same. We are prepared to cheat to win and damn the consequences.  I don’t consider that to be the traits of a country that claims so fervently to be the Brazilians of Africa, with more talent than it knows what to do with!  These are the actions of generations culturally inclined to persistently cut corners due to incessant laziness with the desire to win at all costs in order to cover the cracks of a poorly run and managed football leagues on all levels male and female.  The structures are severely fractured and are beyond repair.  We are in search of a reset button but no matter who is in charge They cannot work the oracle with structures that are compromised because of multiple irreparable fractures of trust, transparency and integrity.

By now the GFA should have had a fully-fledged Football Academy covering all ages from at least the U’9’s and upwards but we are stuck on the U’15’s and even in that there are players that are well over the required age.  We just can’t resist the temptation because we are hostages to short term visons of grandeur

The embarrassment is too much for some of us but clearly not enough for others. I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble but in normal circumstances in a transparent and accountable society Management Teams and Technical Teams would have been given their instructions to walk by now but in Ghana we would rather think about putting up false narratives to confuse the already bemused crowd of onlookers, maintaining those who have brought nothing but disgrace to Ghana while simultaneously burning our tax-payer’s money!  What a shame!   

The funny thing about this all is none of it really matters because the Ghana Black Stars have qualified for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar in November.  So, we are busy convincing Ghanaian foreign based players that they will never fit into the countries they are currently plying their trade with so they should feature for Ghana. No who really cares about the male and or female national U’17 teams or any other national team apart from the Ghana Black Stars.  No one understands the significance of building for the future, there are no succession plans in place the emphasis is on now, now, now, now and now!

With the little borrowed integrity, the GFA may have left they must sack the Management and Technical teams of the U’17 Male and Female immediately.  They are not fit for office and never have been.  Easy to manipulate and eager participants in a corrupt system they have benefited the most, squandering our tax-payer’s money, travelling from country to country from time to time, living it up in some of the best hotels pretending to represent Ghana but really representing their own selfish interests and that of their masters.  The Coaches Association too sit so quietly like sheep to the slaughter unwilling to say anything as they all await their turn to be appointed in a system that does not work, afraid to cry out about the things that are wrong for fear of being placed in quarantine with no hope of anything coming their way.  They too are a part of the repugnant rot that covers the true nature of an organization unwilling to change for the betterment of Ghanaians in general but instead opting to deny the rights of real youngsters from representing Ghana since they lack the ability to nurture, mould and develop young talent.

With examples of the success of the Right to Dream Football Academy and the West African Football Academy before us we are still reluctant to learn and despite hiring expats this seems to be the best blueprint they can endorse, cheating!!!  How can we trust this process?

By Nana Kwaku Agyemang