Not Fit for Purpose: The present system ...

....in place for our senior national team.

For over 30 years and still counting, our senior national team has not won a trophy both at the domestic and international levels. In fact well meaning Ghanaians and football loving fans can prescribe infinite antidotes to this peculiar situation pertaining to the black stars. However, the insurmountable truth is that the system in place for call ups to the senior side is apparently not-fit-for-purpose.

Evidence and history in football has crucially unveiled a blue print associated with successful cup winning national sides such as the Argentines, Brazilians, French, Spanish, Nigerians, Zambians and the list goes on. All these sides built up a system, which embraced and still sucks in talents from the grass root levels through to their senior national sides. This system is so robust such that interferers are immediately maligned and relieved off their duties.

Apparently the system in the now Ghana is described at best as an 'anomaly', with several of our U17, 20 and 23 talents fading out without the system capturing them. It is so unfortunate that the status quo is still in place while talented players are discouragingly maligned and un-nutured to attain a potential to represent the national side. The ongoing system in place is proving to be wasteful, unambitious and futile. In effect, significant questions about the efficiency of this system are mounting. What happened to most of our U20 side who won the trophy in Egypt in 2009? How many of them still play for the senior national team? Who is responsible for tracking these talents from the U17 right up to the time they are potentially nutured for a senior national team call up etc?

As the present system is inefficient, a vacuum is always being created in the call up procedure for our senior national team. And this can be related to what we will say in our local dialect fr? fr? kobo where upon the arrival of any tournament, players are called up from the four corners of the earth to represent Ghana. After the tournament majority of them are done away with, and a new set brought in to represent the nation in a new tournament once again.

I believe the status quo must encapsulate a tri-partite system where by one keeps tab on home grown players, who would have represented Ghana at all levels or at least represented the nation in some respect. The other track useful and non arrogant Ghanaians who ply their trade in the diaspora and a final phase that will attract Ghanaian players born abroad who would like to play wholeheartedly for mother Ghana irrespective of the consequence, but not use the national team as a stepping stone to better their careers, and eventually ignoring Ghana.

The onus thus lies on the GFA and the Ministry of Youth and Sports who are tasked with qualifying Ghana to the 2014 world cup in the interim, and building an efficient and efficate system to handle this present predicament, which blights the senior national team.