| Black Stars and the perpetual blame game |
| Thursday, 16 February 2012 04:26 |
 Cape Verde, Praia; 9th October 2005. Ghana, coached by Ratomir Dujkovic beat Cape Verde 4-0 to qualify for the 2006 Fifa World Cup Finals in Germany.
Yaw Osafo Maafo, who was then Minister of Education and Sports told millions of Ghanaians watching back home on metro tv that "we would tour the whole world with the sole aim of hunting for every Ghanaian player in our quest to build a solid squad for the Germany campaign". Please keep these words in mind as you continue to read.As beautifully illustrated by the Copper Bullets of Zambia, to win any major tournament you must have certain basic ingredients: teamwork, discipline, determination, unity, a good coach, tactics, belief and, whether you like it or not,....a good dose of LUCK! The Chipolopolo had a little bit of everything but, to be frank, not in abundance. Just enough to get them to the golden fleece. If the Black Stars did not have all these ingredients, then we should not really complain too much because time and time again we have failed to address critical shortcomings in Ghana football. Let us not forget that Zambia had to overcome all the pre-tournament favourites including great Ghana and super Senegal. Over confident Ghanaians will never stop moaning as we always do when we lose matches "we are supposed to win" hands down. Where is it written that Ghana must always win because we are the best and therefore it is our right? I am sure this reasoning and arrogance motivated all our opponents as we witnessed over the past three weeks. I felt it was distasteful that in the heat of battle on foreign soil, some of us chose to cut our boys to size even before the Afcon had ended. Now that it is all over, fair game to reflect, take stock and offer sober analysis. So what really went wrong this time around? Was it Asamoah Gyan's fault again? Well, after Didier Drogba's spectacular spot kick miss, the anti Gyan chorus is growing distant. It shows how arrogant and and perhaps how naive we are, as a so-called soccer nation to expect to win every match we play, yet we do not take our best and fittest soldiers to do battle. Seriously, how anybody can blame Asamoah Gyan when we lost 1-0 at the Estadio de Bata is beyond reasoning. What did the rest of the team do for the remaining +85 minutes after Gyan had missed that gift of a penalty? The experts (I do not claim to be one) have come up with all manner of conspiracy theories and reasons to justify their shameful abuse of some players, the coach and the team. Can we not have constructive criticism without using offensive language? My policy used to be diplomacy. That has gone out of the window and now I say what I have to say and face what I have to face. If we think that the Black Stars missed the opportunity to end a 30 year drought at the Nations Cup because of the 78th minute goal by substitute Emmanuel Mayuka, then we are all making a big mistake. The root cause(s) stretch back many many years. We the media have also played a big role in the mirage and self deception that we have the best players in Africa and the world. We are all missing the point, being emotional and hysterical rather than being humble, objective and constructively critical. I do not have all the answers but I do have humble suggestions I would wish to submit to the technical men at the GFA to consider. It does not take a magician to identify a major flaw and a key reason we never seem to have a complete solid team of players. Yes you guessed it; SELECTION of players for tournaments! When was the last time a Black Stars squad was made up of the very BEST Ghanaian players on planet earth from goalkeepers to strikers? If we ever get close, it is about 70% followed by business and politics. Was the 2012 team any different...say 80%? Is it not incredible that both Zambia and Ivory Coast had FULL sets of FIT players with NO SUSPENSIONS to choose from in the final game? If Ghana had advanced to the finals, what set of players would we have used? To be continued...... Yaw Ampofo-Ankrah is a broadcast journalist who has been a regular reporter at every qualification series and tournament with the Black Stars of Ghana since Egypt 2006. In this report, he reviews the team's performance at Afcon 2012 and lessons to be learnt in honest team selection and discipline following Zambia's fairytale triumph.
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