2024 will go down in history as the worst year the Black Stars have witnessed since the AFCON was started in 1957.
The calendar year ended embarrassingly as it commenced.
Niger came to Accra and shockingly defeated Ghana 2-1 to leave the Black Stars the only side that failed to record a single win in a group alongside Grade C and F opponents.
The country is filled with 10,000 ineffective institutions but the Ghana Football Association is the most inept among them all.
It is very interesting to hear the boss of the GFA thinking of a third term at a time when everything football in the country is in a huge mess.
The Ghana Football Association is not functioning in any way, and someone must wake up and sack all those in charge, from the president to the cleaners, because they have disgraced and disappointed 35 million people.
Atsu Tamakloe, an astute journalist, during the post-match conference, told the head coach of Ghana, Otto Addo, that he is a better scout than a coach. “You are better at scouting than coaching because, in coaching, you’re not good at all.” Not because he is a colleague journalist, so I will defend him in any way, but what he said was 500% correct, though he was a bit harsh, and you can’t also blame him.
It is extremely difficult to see Ghana struggle with talents like Kudus, Semenyo, Jordan, Inakii, Issahaku, Partey, Djiku, Tariq, Nuamah and many more good players. Otto Addo has simply failed to bring the best out of these players in his second coming. Failing to beat Niger in two games means Ghana has lost everything, and a complete factory reset is needed.
There is an association within the Ghana Football Association called EXCO, and they financially benefit from only the team’s existence. What at all is their role? What is their duty? What is their business existing?
Ghana Football Association looks like a personal property, and whoever gets the chance to work there treats it anyhow. This is because the nation lacks accountability. Accountability is the biggest problem that has led the association into this mess.
I doubt there’s any institution that looks more useless than the GFA. After so many World Cups and AFCONs, where is the dough the association has received from FIFA and CAF? What have they used the cash for?
Each EXCO member received a whooping USD$100,000 for just being at the Qatar World Cup. That was very criminal from them because the winner of the 2023-24 Ghana Premier League received just USD$30k.
Botswana, who has not tasted anything good in football, paid $52k to the winner of their domestic league last season. Why would Botswana pay a huge sum of money to their champion than Ghana?
Ghana’s domestic league lacks finance as there is no sponsorship for the ongoing season. No one knows the amount the winner will take home at the end of the season. Which part of the world will this happen? It is only in Ghana.
As of the time of penning this piece, it was almost 15 hours since the embarrassment against Niger, but no one has resigned.
The boss himself shamelessly wrote on his Facebook wall, “From the highest heights of world football on the 29th of March 2022 to the lowest ebb of AFCON qualifying matches. My heart bleeds”.
“This is not what we want or what we bargained for. At this point, only cool heads can win, and we, as leaders of our sport, will stay together, be honest with ourselves and fix this problem”, Kurt added.
“The road to full recovery after normalization is bumpy and rough, but our collective efforts and patience will win, and Ghana, our beloved country, will win.
“As a Black Stars fan and as the leader, I share in your pain and our pain.
“We will rise from this temporary setback. It shall be well”, Kurt concluded.
Who was he deceiving? What is the point of that long essay? It would have been best for everyone had he announced his resignation via that write-up.
Otto Addo, in his post-match conference, made it clear that he will not resign and I understand him perfectly because he is on a $50k per month salary. He signed a 3-year deal in March 2024, and he has spent just 8 months of the 36 months. He will not get any compensation if he decides to leave but when the nation decides to boot him out, he will earn a whooping $1.4m.
A country in a transitional period doesn’t give a three-year contract because whoever will be in charge will always look like a gamble. You only go ahead and give out a long contract when things are in very good shape. Whoever gave Otto Addo the 32-month contract got it wrong. The moment a long contract backfires, huge compensation is paid.
Ghana Football Association has become a corrupt centre just like their boss, the Sports Ministry. The ministry under which Ghana Football find itself is very negligent to the extent that they don’t care whatever happens in Ghana’s Football.
It took CAF’s intervention before the various sporting venues across the nation were attended to. The two are so useless and ineffective and all working there must be sacked with immediate effect.
Ghanaian institutions have failed to work recently but none comes close to the GFA in terms of incompetency and uselessness.
