Kwasi Appiah: To sack or not to sack

Very typical of us, we have been back from another disappointing outing at an international football competition, and the talk, as usual, has not been about finding what went wrong. We have been talking, throwing spurious allegations without any careful attempt to fix the problem.

You can be sure that, we will back after another competition to go through this unholy circus. It is not that, we do not know what the problem with our football has been, and why for instance, the Black Stars continue to be disappointing despite the huge expenditure on them.

The issue is that, we have always chosen the easy way out, playing the blame game cheaply without accepting that, our football has lacked a fundamental ingredient, which it dreadfully needs to be transformed into something good and attractive. The missing ingredient is leadership.

Leadership has been absent at the Youth and Sports Ministry to the Football Association to the Black Stars management committee, down to the technical team and the players. If there was and had been serious leadership at the GFA, for example, the whole discussion on sacking or maintaining Coach Kwasi Appiah will not arise.

We would have known what we want and by now, a decisive stance would have been taken. The example that, some countries fired their coaches immediately after their unsatisfactory performance and exit at AFCON 2019 is not alone deficient, but also short-sighted. That talk does not fully appreciate the vital point that, football in those countries has had its head intact.

Our football has been headless and even worse in the last one year. Coaches are hired to be fired. Dismissing Kwasi Appiah will be no new thing. I will not be averse to such a decision in principle. I however see the clamour for his dismissal as a waste of time. If we have any energy, we should be using that, to tell the Normalisation Committee to stick to their mandate, see to the election of a substantive football administration, which will come and breathe life into our game.

Ghana football needs a new set of hands – ideas and plans – better leadership to reshape its future, and bring it out of the disorder that has characterised it. I would prefer a substantive GFA, taking bold decisions on the Black Stars and the entire technical team plus the generality of our football, than to have the stop-gap Normalisation Committee, toy with the passion of the nation.

There are real issues confronting Ghana football. Kwasi Appiah staying or leaving is not one. The Normalisation Committee leading the path to Congress, seeing to the election of a new Executive Committee, who must come, with short to medium term strategies and later, plans in the long term, to radically change our football, are the issues that should be of serious interest.

Post-AFCON discussions should not deviate from the real state of Ghana football. It should look at the bigger issues. Our conversations must be around the important matters of offering Ghana football a new and better leadership – lest, we do a huge disservice to Ghana. Sacking Kwasi Appiah, whether or not it is right, will not redefine Ghana football now or in future.

Only a new leadership with better plans can do that. We must insist on that.