Former Youth and Sports Minister, Edwin Nii Lante Vanderpuye, has expressed his belief that Ghanaian football has been structured in a way that leads to failure.
He points out the consistent underperformance of the national teams in recent tournaments and the struggle to attract both audience and corporate sponsorship to the domestic league.
Vanderpuye, who served as the Minister for Sport from 2015 to 2017, suggests that the seeds of the current failures were planted from the very beginning.
He contrasts the Ghanaian approach, where players are only assembled for tournaments, with the system in top English Premier League clubs. In England, there are junior levels such as U21 and U19 teams that compete in a league, ensuring a continuous flow of young talent into the national setup.
Vanderpuye explains, “What do we see here? We wait until we have a tournament; we invite somebody here, we call somebody from here, put them together and play. We can never achieve results when we continue to do that. It’s like we plan to fail.”
He cites the example of England’s Young Lions at the U21 championship, where new talents like Levi Colwill and Noni Madueke have emerged, while previous players like Calvert-Lewin, Foden, and Greenwood have moved on to higher levels. Vanderpuye emphasizes the importance of nurturing young players from the U17 level, as they will be the ones representing the country in the next four years.
“All the [English] Premier [League] clubs have junior levels – U21, U19 – playing in a league. So the system is built in a way there will always be an infusion of new, younger faces into the national sphere.
“What do we see here? We wait when we have a tournament; we invite somebody here, we call somebody from here, put them together and play. We can never achieve results when we continue to do that.
“It’s like we plan to fail,” Vanderpuye explained to Joy Sports.
“They used to have people like Calvert-Lewin, Foden and Greenwood – all these people were part of the team, but they’ve moved on.
“In the next four years, those playing in the U17 tournament will be there.”
In summary, Vanderpuye believes that Ghanaian football needs a structural overhaul to avoid a continuous cycle of failure, emphasizing the importance of developing young talent at various levels to ensure a sustainable pipeline of players for the national teams.
