A friend was grappling with a technical report he was expected to submit to the board secretary the following morning when I visited him.

He sighed that if he had not chosen a career which had condemned his working life to managing machines, products and people, he would have opted for a profession in sports correspondence.

He said he envied sportswriters because they “are the freest of professionals; they are not inhibited by language or facts”.

He had watched the recent Confederation Cup Final Match between Brazil and the US the previous evening and had read the commentaries.

“You could not do this in a technical report,” he huffed. Thinking over his comments, I think he has a point. Soccer analysts do not seem restrained in choice of language.

Why should they? They must give vent to the emotions expressed by supporters of a losing team and the euphoria of the victors. Soccer victory or defeat touches the pride of a nation and no word should be spared in expressing it.

Thus, it was all right for a football national hero to be lambasted as a narcissist when he shed tears for poor performance at the World Cup; a national team was down-rated as a pack of animals; defeated national team players were dismissed as journeymen.

Tough language is not restricted to sportswriters alone. At a time when football had been dragged in the morass, an outgoing GAF Chairman expressed his disgust by saying, “Ghana soccer has been raped.” Soccer and rape?

Yes, he said so softly but with very deep feeling. I am putting myself in the shoes of a sports analyst (In Ghana who is not a soccer commentator?) but I hope I can control my language.

I am a sports enthusiast and can attest to the searing emotions that find expression in strange language in the aftermath of a match.

I have followed the Black Stars in their recent World Cup qualifying matches. Scrappily and doggedly like a cock in its maiden fight, they have managed to defeat their more dazzling opponents. They pecked, scratched and flapped their wings from Bamako to Omdurman.

They match on and are now at the top of their group with the maximum points. But where is the Dujkovic Credit?

The Bamako Match was a watershed. The display against Benin was quite ordinary and a loss in Bamako would have confirmed a downward slide. Too much was at stake.

By a mischief of fate, the Metro TV transmission was a complete botched job. We saw mostly dark patches of cloud on our screens. In moments of clarity, what we saw was not pleasing at all.

The Stars’ play was disjointed and full of stray passes. Their forte was the defence. Somehow they stood firm and warded off the gifted Malians. That the Stars won that match was entirely due to the erratic approach of the opponents to goal-scoring.

In Omdurman, the Stars played beautiful soccer in the first 15 minutes only, and packed off to their scrappy ways, losing possession very often and were unable to take on their opponents. In that state of confusion, a good team would have over-run the Stars.

But they won again and we have not ceased asking ourselves, “Are we winning or are we lucky?”

Let me put my comments into context by viewing the Stars’ recent performance on a split screen with any of the matches played during the Confederation Cup Finals in South Africa.

The Stars’ standard of play is not a patch on what Egypt, the US or rookies like New Zealand and Iraq showed.

One might argue that it is a mark of a great team that it continues winning while playing badly. We must not forget that the Stars played good soccer at Germany 2006 and if we put the World Cup displays on another split screen with what they play now, a viewer cannot but conclude that there has been retrogression and this is happening in a period when teams like South Africa, Gabon and even Libya have uplifted the quality of their games. So what is the problem? Is it coaching, quality of players or poor administration? Continued    Source: Daily Graphic - Daily Graphic