Change management, not coaches - Nii Lante Vanderpuye

Erstwhile Sports Minister Edwin Nii Lante Vanderpuye has called for the reshuffling of the management of the overseers of footballing activities in Ghana.

In an exclusive interview with GhanaWeb moments after the vetting of the new Minister of Sports Isaac Asiamah, Vanderpuye who was only in office for a year emphatically articulated that players, coaches and the Sports Ministry have been reshuffled in the past but the same cannot be said about management.

“Within the past years, we’ve had 12 ministers of sports… We’ve had 11 coaches, I don’t believe all the coaches were bad, we’ve had over 80 players at one time or the other and changes. If there is any part of the puzzle that is missing then it’s the management,” he noted.

The Ghana Football Association is an autonomous body and officials are elected for a 4-year term.

In 2014, after Nigeria's exit to France at the last 16 of the World Cup, the Nigeria High Court ruled that its federation would cease to run the national team, handing over the role to a government civil servant.

This was in breach of a FIFA rule that obliges member associations to manage their own affairs "independently and with no influence from third parties,”.

FIFA later suspended Nigeria from participating in any international football citing government interference in the running of its national federation.

In 2014 after the World Cup in Brazil, Elvis Afriyie Ankra was removed from office in the wake of allegations that he collaborated with the GFA to overspend tax payers monies budgeted for the tournament (no one from the GFA was removed from office).

Notwithstanding these facts, the ex-Sports Minister is calling for a change in “the management”.

“If we have always hit the coach, management and the players lets now for once also look at the constant in theses whole indicators.”

“The puzzle we have has dealt with the minister who we think were not good enough, some people also think it’s the coaches who were not good enough and some people think it’s the players, but we have shuffled and used over 80 players.”

“So now let’s look at the other side, is it the issue of management? How are managing our football, how are we managing our national teams and then let’s look at that one maybe that will be the cause of our problems.”