Manuel Concalves Gomes. All of a sudden a name that would have sounded so alien a few weeks back is becoming a common one. Over the weekend, the Portuguese enjoyed perhaps more airtime than any other person in Ghana.
He was the favourite subject of several sports discussions as we undertake the long search for another senior national team football coach. Some ripped into him, others called him a prophetic choice while a greater number of people wondered who the hell this Portuguese was to come here and demand we pay him 30,000 dollars a month so he would select eleven players, dress them in yellow shirts with our national emblem and try to plant one round ball in between two post so we can be called winners.
Gomes is according to very informed sources is the man most likely to become the next coach of the Black Stars. He is one of four applicants short listed by the Ben Koufie chaired Ghana Football Association for further interviewing for the Black Stars job.
The other three are very familiar names. Emmanuel Kwesi Afranie is currently acting national coach and a man who has by Ghanaian and any other standards an impressive CV. Just two years back, he was named the Confederation of African Football as the second best coach on the continent behind Senegal world cup coach Bruno Metsu.
Abdul Razak had his name by an even more prestigious CAF honour. 25 years ago in 1978, he was crowned African footballer of the year. Now he is building a solid reputation as a coach with brllianst stints in Mali and Benin from where he picked up three league titles.
The last one is Burkhard Ziese who in coaching Ghana to qualify for the 1992 Africa Cup of Nations earned a special place in the heart of Ghanaians. The Black Stars had not been represented at the tournament for eight years but Burkhard reversed that.
In theory any of the four could become Black Stars coach. Ben Koufie has promised a clean race in which all four applicants have in equal chance of winning a job that has the potential of shooting up one’s reputation or destroying to the bearest minimum the existing one.
Yet for much of last week, it was clear that the interview scheduled for January 31-February 3 would be just another excersice. Manuel Gomes, it was widely reported would be appointed stars coach ahead of Afranie, Razak and Ziese.
Gomes is a Portuguese whose name is remembered by most Africans for guiding Angola to the 1998 African Nations Cup. There, they crushed out after the first round and Gomes was kicked out by the Palancas Negras for being too defensive. Normally for Angola, crushing out from the first round of the Nations Cup would have represented no shame. But two years earlier, they had played some brilliant football in South Africa on their debut under Carlos Alinho and expected same.
Gomes has gone on from there to become assistant coach of Portugal and is now an assistant at top Porttuguese club side Benefica. Now he wants to coach Ghana, confident he can turn a country that has slipped dangerously down the pecking order in African football into leaders again.
And it appears he would get it. So much so that much of the past weekend’s discussions on the black Stars coaching job wasn’t on who was most suitable for the job but whether Gomes is fit to be Ghana coach.
Questions were and are still being raised in particular about his strong links to the official kit sponsor of the Black Stars, L-Sporto.
The concerns have, it seems more to do with ethical issues than technical. L-Sporto are supposed to be paying 40% of the would be coach’s salary. But before they do, they must take part in the negotiations that brings him here.
In the case of Gomes, it is L-Sporto that put him forward to the Ghana Football Association. And the worry for many people is that the coach is getting the Stars job basically because he was brought here by L-Sporto.
The Ghana Football Association and the kit aponsors have been doing their best to debunk that view which is gaining roots by the day. Yet the FA has said little to convince anyone that they won’t chose the Portuguese even before the interviews are conducted.
Ben Koufie already says Gomes’ background as an assistant coach for Portugal at the 2002 world cup “is unique among all the others.”
He insists too that Gomes would come to the January 30-February 3 interview with an advantage because he is backed by L-Sporto.
Statements like that has been fine ammunition for Koufie’s critics. They ask for instance why the FA would waste precious time on interviewing the other three when one man has the backing of the FA chairman? Why should the FA waste also waste a few thousands of dollars on purchasing an air ticket for Burkhard Ziese to come down to Ghana when he is the last man they are thinking of for the job?
Koufie is a man of great contradictions so even as he gives high praise to Gomes, he tries hard to appear balanced. He has already set out the criteria for the interview. The coach’s must impress, he says. “We must see their personality, they must prove their technical know how and off course their general character as human beings”.
Even though it is never explicitly said, character is the main reason why the men at the football association and many football journalist are unwilling to make a case for Afranie as Black Stars coach. They speak of corruption without proof and insist that the self proclaimed coach-hene is not fit to become Black Stars coach.
To that Afranie simply says, provide proof r shut up. He never loses a moment to blow his own trumpet for even a micro second. “I am the only coach in Ghana to have led four separate teams to the world cup” is one of his favourite lines in reference to his role in qualifying the 1991, 1997 national U-17 teams to the world cup, the women’s team to the 1999 world world cup and the national U-20 side to the 2001 world cup where the team placed second.
Now he wants the chance to prove himself with the Black Stars. “I have proved at every level that I am a good coach except the Black Stars. I have done a good job so far as acting coach and put in a great deal of work to make the team good. I think it is only logical that I am allowed to continue”, he stresses.
Razak’s case from what he says is based on cost effectiveness, stardom and relative youth. He says that he won’t cost as much as a foreign coach would. He also points out that he did incredible things for Ghana including helping the nation win the 1998 African Cup of Nations so he believes he can command the respect every coach needs from his players. Plus he argues strongly that there is no reason why a foreign coach should be handed the Black Stars job because none of them have proven track records. “Which of them for instance has qualified their countries to the world cup before?” he asks
Burkhard Ziese hasn’t. In fact Ghana and a disastrous spell in Zambia in 1998 has been his only notable job in a colourless coaching career. But he is a man who enjoys enormous good will and many people’s outside favourite for the job.
For him, there is some unfinished business to do in Ghana. “I played the first half of my duty in Ghana, it is now left with the second”.
Gomes in several ways also completed his first half in Africa with Angola but now wants a second with Ghana. It looks like he would get it not necessarily because he is fantastic but because Ghana’s kit sponsors brought him and because a cash-strapped GFA would be helped with 40% of his salary by L-Sporto.
The guys at L-Sporto are smart aren’t they? The fear for many people is that their smartness might force an ill judged decision by Ghana.
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