Player recruitment in Ghana; strategic or wholesale?

(A GNA Feature by William Dodzi Ezah)

Accra, Oct. 14, GNA - Characteristically of every new soccer season, clubs embark on recruitment drives to get the best of materials in preparations for the season.

The local scene has for the past few weeks witnessed the clubs seriously engaged in recruitment of players, meant to beef up their respective teams for future competitions, but whether these recruitment exercises are meant to fill vacant positions or beef up the team remains questionable.

This is based on the fact that recent observations on the trend of player recruitment in the country indicates that the exercise is conducted on the basis of emotions and connections with little or no regard for tactical and technical consideration.

Unlike Europe and elsewhere where clubs make recruitments based purely on tactical and technical thoughts, our system is all about sensation and personal interests.

In England, Manchester United at the beginning of the current season recruited four players; Antonio Valencia (Wigan Athletic), Gabriel Obertan (Girondins Bordeaux), Michael Owen (Newcastle United) and Mame Biram Diouf (FK Molde) whilst Manchester City brought into their fold eight players made up of Gareth Barry (Aston Villa), Roque Santa Cruz (Blackburn Rovers), Stuart Taylor (Aston Villa), Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Toure, both from Arsenal, Joleon Lescott (Everton), Sylvinho (Barcelona) and Carlos Tevez (Manchester United).

On the other hand, Chelsea who are backed by one of the richest persons in the world recruited only four new players made up of Daniel Sturridge (Manchester City), Ross Turnbull (Middlesborough), Yuri Zhirkov (CSKA Moscow) and Nemanja Matic (MFK Kosice) and this is the phenomenon throughout Europe and the rest of the World according to information gathered by the maximum of 30 players on their payroll for every soccer season yet they produce the best brand of football on the globe.

The situation is however the contrary in Ghana.

In the case of the two leading clubs in the country; Accra Hearts of Oak and Kumasi Asante Kotoko have recruited 21 and 13 new players respectively making up a total of 34 players.

Large portions of these recruitments in the local scene were conducted, without any technical guidance and also in the absence of the current technical directors of the clubs making one wonder the criteria under which the managements such decisions were arrived at.

At the end of the day, both Hearts and Kotoko have over 40 players on their payroll for the coming season as compared to well advanced clubs who have a minimum of 25 and maximum of 30 players on their financial roster. Taking the situation of Hearts and Kotoko as case studies, one is compelled to argue that the recruitments were not purely strategic, even though some of the newly recruited players are good materials. The question however is whether they were recruited to fill vacant positions or for positions with weaker options and the answer is obviously the negative.

Local recruitments have not in the least fallen into modern trends where the exercise which is supposed to fill vacant positions or positions with weaker options has rather turned into a wholesale one.

Hearts, it would be noted had in their camp players like Philemon McCarthy, Laud Quartey and Joshua Opoku in the goalkeeping department and off loaded Opoku to bring on Tetteh Luggard and Baba Sampana. The situation may result in healthy competition for positions in the teams, but it is outweighed by the negative consequences since a further sieving of the available materials could as well get the very best out of the lot instead of engaging in wholesale recruitments.

Wholesale recruitments have over the years sent the two clubs into huge debts as estimated figures indicates that Hearts owe close GHC Two million, whilst that of Kotoko is yet to be made public and these debts are obviously due to unnecessary recruitments and expenditures.

The above figure however could be on the lower side if one considers the fact that price tags on players have over the years increased drastically with each player costing a maximum of GHC 60,000 as in the case of Eric Gawu from King Faisal to Hearts about three years ago and Alex Asamoah from Ashgold to Kotoko for almost GHC 100,000 at the beginning of last season.

Despite the high price tags, of which officials of the clubs have complained publicly, it has never starred them away from such ventures. The situation has rather worsened the financial plight of the clubs instead of deriving the best out of the newly recruited players. Significantly among them is that the exercise has rather contributed to redundancies and waste of talents in Ghana since a maximum of 18 players are needed for a match, it is obvious that some of the players will end up as bench warmers, training horses or even ball boys who might eventually loose their worth.

This is sheer waste of talents as these players could perform better in other teams, but are taken "hostages" by these two glamorous clubs sometimes without reason.

Again, the financial plight of the two clubs is directly linked to the wholesale recruitment system they have adopted over the years, not forgetting the fact that their performance on the continental level has rather depreciated instead of improving.

These are indeed major problems that need serious policy approach from all stakeholders namely; Ghana Football Association (GFA), Ghana League Clubs Association (GHALCA) and many of the other stakeholders of Ghana football.

It is view of this, that such a policy must take a more serious look at youth development by the Premier League Clubs with serious considerations to the issue of reviving the reserve side system.

Again the Premier League Clubs must also consider developing player recruitment policies with well defined guidelines aimed at achieving strategic results.

However on a more serious note, the Clubs must be prepared to off load players found to have performed below standard at the end every season to make way for better and competent ones.

And this exercise must not be conducted with emotional attachments to such players or their connections to one management member or the other but purely on technical and tactical grounds.

On the general scale, the situation needs the efforts of all to ensure an overall development of Club football and management in the country to encourage the hitherto enthusiastic supporters to once again troop to our stadia to watch the youngsters display their football talents as was in the past.