By CK Arthur
Social media is clearly awash with joy after the sack of Otto Addo and understandably, so —everyone is tired! My question, however, is simple: are our current footballers that good for competitive games at the world stage? No disrespect to our great talents, but upon deep reflection, I sometimes shudder to think that maybe we are just overestimating our guys.
After that unforgettable Tuesday (January 31, 2006) “disaster” at the Ismailia Stadium, Egypt, which saw our Black Stars exit an Afcon group stage because they crumbled in a 2–1 defeat against Zimbabwe, a new golden era began.
From 2008 to 2017, our Black Stars chalked enviable successes on the continent —even though the trophy kept eluding our lips—and the world holistically:
2008 —Afcon Semifinalist
2010—Afcon Semifinalist, World Cup Quarterfinalist
2012—Afcon Semifinalist
2013–Afcon Semifinalist
2014–World Cup Group stage exit
2015—Afcon Finalist
2017—Afcon Semifinalist
After 2017, the storm began to rage:
2018—Failed to qualify for World Cup
2019—Eliminated at the round 16 stage
2022—Exited at the Group stages of Afcon and World Cup
2023—Exited at the Group stage of Afcon
2025—Failed to qualify for Afcon
For the past seven years, we have been a pale shadow of what we used to enjoy, regardless of the man on the touchline.
Milovan Rajevac—that one guy whose name will never be redacted from our football annals because of his historical achievement at the 2010 World Cup— returned to coach the Black Stars after CK Akonnor’s exit and interestingly reset our Afcon journey: we exited at the group stage for the first time since 2006!
If it were really a coaching menace, what would account for the once upon a time a hero becoming the villain in our football story? He became rusty after the years of not coaching us? There was no connection with the players?
Maybe, just maybe, there is dearth of quality in the team—simply put, our players are not good enough! If Otto Addo can win eight out of ten World Cup Qualifiers, and lose to Austria and Germany with such magnitude, maybe the “big guys” exposed our cracks, and not necessarily because we don’t have a good coach.
Clearly, our performance began plummeting after 2017, and it has been eight years and counting without any viable solution. It is quite easy to pin it on coaches because that appears glaring, but the real bacteria could be festering.
Maybe it is high time we acquiesced that our players, vis-à-vis world football, can’t compete to our expectations. It may sound defeatist, but sometimes accepting the reality and scaling down our hopes is just the way to go.
How on earth did we transition from cursing our stars for drawing against Germany in 2014 to thanking them for not conceding more than 2 goals after 12 years? A coaching problem?
Yes, coaches play key roles in determining the successes of teams or otherwise, but when the “materials” available seem perfect, when in actual sense, might be average in comparison to their competitors, it creates a lasting delusional problem!
I am not waiting to gloat—I want us to succeed that bad—but I am not really expecting any extreme magic from the lucky one who succeeds Otto Addo, giving that he is going to manage the same set of players available, but I pray he proves me wrong!
Shalom!
Long live the Black Stars!
Long live Ghana football!
Long live Ghana
