When Again?

The last time Ghana won the AFCON was in 1982 in Libya. The 10 years between 1982 and 1992 when we got to the final again, presented one of the longest bad spells for Ghana Black stars. 1984 in Bouake, Ivory Coast, was a disaster, earning the moniker “Bouake debacle” in Ghanaian football folklore. We could not qualify for the 1986, 1988 and the 1990, tournaments hosted by Egypt, Morocco and Algeria respectively. One of the painful moments in our bid to qualify for the 1990 tournament, was when after loosing to Gabon by a goal to nil in Libreville, Frimpong manso scored a late winner for Ghana in the return leg in Accra only for the same Frimpong manso to miss his penalty during the penalty shoot outs.

After missing out on the 92 trophy to Ivory Coast, we waited until four years later to play some very good football only to loose to South Africa through some questionable officiating at the South Africa 96 tournament. The 10 years preceding our prominent rise to the pinnacle of African football again in 2006 when we qualified for our first ever world cup, was nothing to write home about. 1998 was a fiasco in Burkina Faso , 2000 we were knocked out by South Africa at the quarter final stage, In 2002 we were again knocked out at the quarter final stage by Nigeria, 2004 we could not qualify and in 2006 though we qualified, we were knocked out at the group stages after losses to Zimbabwe and Nigeria.

Then came the 2008 tournament which we hosted and the entire show was run greatly on Ghana wining because we were hosting not more so on the fact that the selection was questionable. Injured players were taken to camp while fitter ones were left behind. This greatly came to bear in our semi final match where in the absence of John Mensah, Michael Essien-our best player at the tournament- had to move from Midfield and slot in at the central defence, we lost to Cameroun and that ended our 2008 Tournament.

2010 in Angola presented the best ever platform for us to win the AFCON again, why? We had just won the world U-20 tournament, and seven (Ransford Osei, Dede Ayew, Dominic Adiyiah, Jonathan Mensah, Samuel Inkoom, Opoku Agyemang and Emmanuel Agyemang Badu) of that U-20 world cup winning squad have been roped into the senior national team of which six would later become regulars in the team. Majority of us in the country were doubtful though, due to certain injuries to key players such as Stephen Appiah, John Mensah, Michael Essien and Sulley Muntari, so those youngsters had no pressure whatsoever on them, rather, they wanted to prove a point. We all saw the fighting spirit they put on show until we were beaten by the better side in the form of Egypt.

Based on that AFCON 2010 performance and our performance five months later at the world cup, Ghanaians were expecting nothing but the Cup at the 2012 edition in Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. It was supposed to be the year we ended our 30 year wait for an AFCON trophy, if confidence alone could win the cup for us then Ghanaians were high on it. Not only were we banging on our steady progress from the 2008 event where we placed third and the 2010 event where we placed second, but also on the fact that our usual nemesis in the form of Cameroun, Nigeria, Egypt and occasionally South Africa were not around. As we know already, we struggled to win our matches and eventually lost out at the semi-final stage to Zambia.

Player selections were questionable; the coach looked incompetent, especially with his substitutions. Rumour abounded that a certain agency was the one recruiting players for the team. Dissent, division, juju, gambling, and mistrust among players were rife

I do not want us to dwell on these rumours too much, because truth be told, if we had won the tournament all these information wouldn’t have come up. My worry is that anytime we miss out on winning any tournament, several excuses are given after which we all forget about it and move on. My biggest worry however is that Ghana may slump in to those long spells when our pride as one of Africa’s’ fotballing giant was punctured by countries like Zimbabwe, Uganda, Togo, Burundi and Rwanda, when it looked like anytime we entered into a tournament no one feared us anymore. The core of the 2006 squad were made up of the 2001 U-20 world cup finalist, while the 2009 winners have now become the core of this 2012 squad, with Ghana missing out on the world U-20 and the Olympic games coupled with the apparent lack of interest by the FA to pick players from the local league, I wonder where we are going to get players from, to continue the growth of the Black stars team. Let’s admit the Black stars are in decline and the earlier we do something about it the better.

The 2013 tournament in South Africa is 11 months away, the regulars such as Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Cameroun will be competing for qualification again and with the new found confidence of teams like Zambia, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Tunisia, Sudan and occasional party-poopers like Senegal, Mali, Togo and DR Congo, do not be surprised if you receive a shock at next years tournament and if next year does not also look good when again can we win the Cup.