How Nyantakyie Is Ruining The Future Of Ghana Football

Joseph P. Owusu

Our ubiquitous GFA boss has been global trotting, smiling to the cameras and taking credit for our relative success (we really haven't won anything other than the junior tournaments that we win with asterisks), but our domestic football is sinking and sinking fast.

On Nyantakyi's watch Ghana’s local league has sunk to its lowest ebb. We owe our modest international success to the fact that we have more players playing in top European leagues than in any time in our history. Whilst the Chelsea's and the Udiniese saps the strength of our local league by importing our top players, they mould our top players into world caliber players that help us compete more robustly in international football. So really a GFA boss deserve little credit for Ghana's improvement in the international arena.

With the elite European teams polishing up our players for competitive international tournaments, an effective GFA boss must be seen doing a lot more on the domestic front: brainstorming with owners of premier leagues to devise creative means to increase stadium attendance, improve cash-strapped teams' financing, solve our perennial domestic coaching problems, lay firmer structures to recruit and train young players; eschew age cheating in youth tournaments, etc. But our "greatest GFA chairman ever" show no interest in this blue color side of his job. Instead he has become the frequent flyer flying with huge entourage to watch every single international Black Star match and global trotting unnecessarily, whilst our domestic football is languishing. Is it really necessary for a GFA chairman to fly to watch every single international match with a huge entourage? Why is that Ghana sends more officials that players to international football matches? Who pays for all that? How transparent are the GFA’s finances? Can Nyantakyi make a pledge to the publicly share information on how he spends GFA money, rather than hide behind FIFA policy of non-governmental interference in football management?

When was the last the time a Ghanaian team made it to the league stage of the African Champions league? Or when was the last a Ghanaian team won a continental tournament or even made it to the final? Why are our local coaches so far behind in learning the modern technical knowledge of the game? How long are we going to depend on foreign coaches who often leave too soon even when want them to stay longer or are so hindered by cultural barriers that their effectiveness are muted? What long term plans are we making to recruit and train first-rate minds that are Ghanaians to coach our national teams? Why do we have a glut of midfielders and a dearth of strikers? Why can’t Ghana produce quality strikers and have to put up with an obscene humiliation from a spoilt brat whose only link to Ghana are his parents that he even disowns?

Ghanaian fans must wake up! The plummeting nature of our domestic league must be a grave concern to all who care about the future our Ghana soccer. Fans must be alarmed and demand more from the GFA. It’s sad that Ghana languished so long in the international football wilderness that we have set our standards so low to the point where merely qualifying for the world cup in of itself becomes enough for us. Thus Ghanaian fans and football administrators are living in total oblivion to an impending disaster. Nyantakyi needs to get to work and lead the nation to revive and reinvigorate our comatose domestic football.