Herbert Addo will return to the shores of Ghana after his team's horror showing in Sudan to discover a country in depressing and unforgiving mood.
The 2011 Championship of African Nations may not have caught on here thanks in no small part to the incredibly poor television coverage that ensured that either the feed was going off too many times or we did not have the chance to see the final group game at all. It was proof that mass coverage does not guarantee quality.
For Addo too, the tournament was a stark reminder of the perils of coaching, of how one moment you are king, the next utterly worthless.
One website used the word useless in their headline to describe the Aduana FC coach. On social networking sites Addo's reputation was battered.
Yet this was the same man who a few weeks ago was the darling of a growing and strong voice for a local coach to handle the senior team. Two months in football can make a lot of difference.
Addo had gone to the championship with high hopes. He spoke of going one better than Milovan Rajevac's team that finished as runners up in Ivory Coast two years ago. He had in a way upped the ante and expectation level when he claimed in his campaign for the Black Stars job that as local he knew the players and could get the best out of them.
Handed a wonderful opportunity to do that, he fluffed it big time. He lost a chance to make a case for his Ghanaian colleagues; he blew an opportunity to send a strong message that in the hands of local coaches, Ghana football is safe.
But it is utterly dangerous to make sweeping generalizations based on Addo's miserable week in Sudan. You can't judge locals based solely on how poorly Addo's team has done. You can't call them all incompetent as a result. You can't in fact all of a sudden run Addo down because his team played so poor, without spirit and without pride. He afterall only last season guided a team straight from the lower division of Ghana football to the league title. He was the same man who in 1997 took AshantiGold to the CAF Champions League finals.
But he failed miserably this term. It leads to major questions of course about the quality of the Ghana league but the answers to those questions cannot be conclusive. Only two years ago, Ghana came mighty close to winning it, some have argued endlessly that players from here should be dominating the regular side.
One thing is for sure though and it is that there are major issues that needs fixing urgently. Slaying Addo may satisfy an immediate emotional need to let off steam and channel frustration elsewhere but it will take more than that to right the wrongs of Sudan. And that will require cool, thoughtful heads not given to rush judgements.
