It's Desailly - As FA Headhunts

The Ghana Football Association has started head-hunting for the next coach of the Black Stars, with former France skipper, Marcel Desailly, tipped to succeed the departed Goran ‘Plavi’ Stevanovic.

The procedure, GFA sources have revealed, will enable the GFA to appoint a personality with a background suitable for Ghanaian purposes rather than merely scrutinising a CV and accompanying terms of engagement.

The head-hunt departs from the previously-adopted method of receiving applications from qualified and interested candidates, and the source said matters of adaptability to or familiarity with Ghanaian culture have become critical in the wake of challenges that have dogged the Black Stars lately.

And with the Stars set to begin 2013 Nations Cup and 2014 World Cup qualifiers in June, the source said the GFA would fill the post by the end of April.

The GFA last Monday finally confirmed it had severed ties with Serbian Plavi after just one year and one month of his two-year contract, naming Plavi’s assistant, Kwasi Appiah, as interim head coach.

But the GFA source told Graphic Sports that with virtually no activity within the next one-and-a-half months, the next coach would be appointed in time to prepare the Stars for the games against Zambia and Lesotho in June.

The prime candidate, the source said, remained Desailly, a former World Cup, European championship and UEFA Champions League winner who has acquired the pro license certificate, the highest qualification obtainable in football coaching.

With a clout that stands up to any football personality anywhere in the world, the advantage lies in Desailly’s Ghanaian background, the source said.

Besides, he is said to be uninterested in the official accommodation and vehicle, while the fact that he is resident in Ghana is all the more viewed as solution to the absenteeism that characterised the regimes of expatriates.

Brazilian World Cup winner, Carlos Dunga, was reported to be interested in the Black Stars job, but with Ghana unlikely to match the seven-digit salary he was worth as Brazil coach leading up to their exit from the 2010 World Cup, that possibility is a long shot.

The source said the GFA was yet to contact Desailly who pulled out of the race for the job in 2010 after an aggressive campaign in the media by supposed agents of Plavi forced him to pull out before his interview for the job.