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| Youth and Sports Minister, Mahama Ayariga. |
The Ghana Football Association
(GFA) held a press conference on the Black Stars’ shame in Brazil but not
everything was satisfactorily explained as the media disagreed with the FA, lambasting
them for their mishandling of issues in the team’s camp with many calling for the
dissolution of the Black Stars management committee. I supported and still support
that call.
New Youth and Sports Minister,
Mahama Ayariga announced the setting up of a three-man committee to ascertain
what went wrong in Brazil while giving appropriate recommendations to forestall
a recurrence of that national disgrace. The committee is yet to start work. Interestingly,
as the football fraternity went to sleep on Thursday, July 10, 2014, a circular
emerged talking about: “The Group of Eminent Football Administrators’ Retreat
to Review the State of the Game of Football in Ghana and Advice (sic) on a
National Strategy”.
This has set tongues wagging in
the media to the extent that, a critical scrutiny of the press release on the event
even revealed that, the name of the hotel where the programme will held today was
wrong. Let’s forgive whoever wrote the press release for that error but that, in
insincerity, confirms the hastiness and by extension, irrelevance of this
impulsive event.
That, the 60 people who have
been invited to the retreat are not “eminent football administrators” isn’t an issue
I would like to interrogate but quick view on that list is that, we don’t need all
of them to brainstorm on the state of Ghana football offer advice. Again, I won’t
question the intentions of the retreat organisers but they have clearly got it
wrong.
Assuming that, the state of Ghana
football is bad, I think, a retreat of this nature won’t change anything. The GFA
have been legitimately vested with the powers to manage Ghana football. The retreat
organisers should know this and stop wasting everybody’s time. What they have
to do is to liaise with the FA to learn of the true state of affairs; encourage
and support them.
The path taken by the retreat
organisers even mocks the Youth and Sports Ministry. It exposes their ignorance
but are the people at the Ministry novices? I should
have been optimistic about this event because pessimism saps my energy to
reason constructively but very typical of some of our leaders, they have given me
reasons to pessimistic. That is sad. Why is it that, we keep wasting time and money
on unhelpful things?
Our football is not all about the
Black Stars and their continuous failure in international competitions. It is
about the structures at the FA, it is about infrastructure, it is about
organisation, it is about money, it is about the personnel and their knowledge
and the level of professionalism they exhibit. That is what the retreat organisers
must know.
Juvenile football is
coma. It exist only on the FA’s mind and it is only mentioned in the FA’s
long, winding speeches given at Congresses. Women’s football is struggling to
find feet. There is hardly any attraction or interest in the Women’s league. Our
domestic men’s league competitions aren’t well organised despite the GFA/PLB’s efforts
to make it better.
Clubs are badly managed. They lack
professionalism. Clubs don’t have money to recruit, keep and pay their players
well. They play on bad pitches. They have poor or inadequate facilities to ensure
growth or development. They are unable to compete well with their peers on the continent
and beyond. That is the small picture I can paint of the state of Ghana
football.
Retreat organisers, give us a
break! Waste not our time and scarce resources on the so-called eminent football
administrators’ retreat. We don’t need this retreat. Mr. Minister, please liaise
with the GFA to learn of the true state of Ghana football. After that, let’s
know what plans you have to help the FA change anything bad you find.
