<<Print>>There are many angry voices within Ghana football at the moment. It is the sort of anger and frustration you vent out when you feel someone is short-changing you, disrespecting who you are and taking you for granted.
At the heart of the issue is the current controversy about the manner Black Stars coach Avram Grant has decided that for whatever reason, the Ghana league is not worth watching, that this country is not worth staying in. And in an interview meant to explain and defend his client, Grant’s agent told the BBC he very much cherished the Ghana job, reminded us how grateful we should be to the Israeli for that AFCON final again and why given the poor nature of the Ghana league, not being around to watch should be no big deal.
“He sleeps and drinks Ghanaian football but at the moment the quality of the league in Ghana is not up there due to a number of reasons”, Saif Rubie said. “Any player that does well in Ghana goes to play in second or third division teams in Europe or Asia in places like Thailand and Vietnam and obviously for Avram, these are not the kind of players he will look to pick for the national team so the pool of players in the Ghanaian league is not the standard that it should be. You look at the players that he has picked for the national team, you can’t really argue with one who has come and not performed at the highest level.”
There wasn’t much wrong with Rubie’s statement to be honest. He said something we say everyday about the quality of the Ghana league, about the speed with which players are packing their bags and heading out to the most obscure places to play their football. What he forgot in professing that opinion was that as part of his client’s mandate as Ghana coach is to pay attention to the domestic league. He also forgot maybe conveniently that at no point in the history of any country’s football has their league been so poor that their national boss has had the luxury of not paying attention to it. So he was right to question the quality but using the lack of quality and the exodus which moves at the speed of a bullet train as justification why Grant does not watch the domestic game was wide off the mark.
And understandably it has got some of the strongest disciples of the Ghana game up in arms. The GFA is unhappy about the fact that he stayed away from the country for so long after the last match against Mauritius and have told Grant that. He has been unhappy about what his agent clearly considers much ado about nothing. He will be even more upset if he hears what Abra Appiah, the head of the Professional League Board of Ghana’s say on the matter.
Appiah said: “It is only a poor teacher, an unproductive teacher, a lazy teacher who goes about complaining about his tools. At a point when he came in I don’t think our league was different from what he is now. Has he come up with one single idea or advice to improve our league? I don’t think this statement comes from Grant neither does he blessed it. It is unfortunate that he doesn’t stay in this country to come to that conclusion. How did he come by the statement?”
Clearly emotions are running at breakneck speed and in all that a sense of perspective has been lost. In it all too, there has been a certain measure of arrogance on the part of the Grant camp in what their response to a genuine concern is.
Maybe somebody didn’t tell the Israeli but in this country we can’t stand national coaches who don’t live here. And rightly so. It sends negative vibe about his commitment to the job and that negative vibe is enhanced even more by the constant reminders about why we should be grateful to have to have him. It is one of the highest paying jobs here for Christ sake.
The regular reminders about how well Grant has done in making the national team good again after the “debacle” of Brazil as his agent says, this claim that he is working unseen miracles for any student of Ghana football is a mockery. Grant reached the final in Equatorial Guinea after the chaos of Brazil but so did Milovan Rajevac only five years before him. Before Grant, Ghana had reached the semi final of every Nations Cup since 2008 so a final appearance was the least requirement, Brazil money chaos or not.
But you can understand him. After that final appearance in Equatorial Guinea, the football establishment gave each player a car and reacted to it as if it was the greatest moment in Ghana football. We glorified it and Grant felt like a Messiah. Maybe now he is simply behaving like one.
Messiahs however perform miracles, they understand their mandate and they lift people up. In refusing to watch the Ghana league because the pool of players is not good enough as his agent says, Grant is not doing what Messiahs do.
This same league which we all admit is poor produced Baba Rahman who has cost Chelsea a staggering £21m. Three seasons ago he was playing at Kumasi Asante Kotoko. He has earned that move off the back of three seasons in Germany, two of them in the second division. Surely he didn’t become good overnight simply because he showed up in Germany one morning. In the last Nations Cup squad that he called up, you can count on your finger tips the number of players who didn’t emerge from the same league. In 2010 when Ghana reached the final of the Nations Cup, the likes of Emmanuel Agyemang Badu, Samuel Inkoom, Rahim Ayew who were all regulars had only recently left Ghana. In 2006 when Ghana first appeared at the world cup, one of our best players Shila Illiasu was a home based player at Kumasi Asante Kotoko.
The morale of the history lesson for Grant is that apart from those born and raised in Europe, Ghanain players don’t emerge in major leagues overnight. They grind their way through this league we admit is poor. But the fact that so many gems have emerged from here is also the reason why not watching is absurd. Imagine the psychological value for the players in seeing their national coach in the stands, in knowing that they could get their chance with a bit of effort. Afterall Grant called up a player from the fourth tier of English football, Kwesi Appiah and he was not found wanting. He called him up because he had seen him play and trusted him. How does he make the same judgement about others if he refuses to watch them?
And oh for a man whose last job was in Thailand, there is something comical about not wanting to watch a league because of it’s quality. Thailand must have an awesome league then. As Milan Zivadinovic and Goran Stevanovic found out, we can’t stand coaches who want to have only long distance relationships with us. You are either in or out.