Is it all to lose for the Black Stars?

Years of strenuous work anchored on effective policy by football administrators past and present to build the Black Stars into arguably one of the most visible sports brands on the continent is tethering on the brink after a confidential report that accused players of the senior national team of using black magic to destroy each other at the recent Cup of Nations tournament was leaked to the media. My heart cringed when I heard the story for the first time on the ubiquitous BBC World Service at 16.30 hrs GMT while driving home on Friday last week.

The news about the leak and the fact that it was reported on the BBC which is one of the most respectable broadcasting giants in the world as well as on other international networks may have irreparably damaged the image of the Black Stars as a respectable global brand. What a story of this nature does is that it reduces us in the eyes of the public and with it the vestige of respect and goodwill we have gained within the corporate world both home and abroad.

There is no gainsaying this truth. The painful aspect is that it has taken us so many years of astute work to launch ourselves into the good graces of corporate sponsors only for us to engulf ourselves into this shameful and very precarious situation. If the circumstance of our loss was hard to take, the leakage of this confidential report has only exacerbated our plight. Here we are struggling to come to grips with our failure to win a tournament many had touted us to annex to end a 30 year barren spell, then we find ourselves embroiled in a story whose source is a leaked confidential report that accuses our players of using witchcraft against each other.

This for me was the unkindest cut yet. As indicated earlier a lot of work has been done to place the Black Stars in a better position than before. Obviously the Kwesi Nyantakyi led administration has been largely credited for overseeing the resurgence in the fortunes of the senior national football team in recent times but it has come in for criticism and well deserved too over its handling of this story as well as for Ghana's failure to win the Africa Cup of Nations hosted by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Going into the biennial tournament on the back of a historic quarter-final berth at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and also as losing finalists at the Africa Cup of Nations in Angola the same year, the Black Stars flattered to deceive and crashed out of the tournament at the semi-final stage of the competition.

From pre-tournament favorites, Ghana contrived to settle for fourth place. It's been over two weeks already since our famous loss to the Zambian National team and needless to add that the two weeks have been saturated with the usual post-tournament analysis which have been very well moderated by our vibrant and powerful radio stations. However, when the story about the leaked report broke, it effectively changed the character of public discourse on the matter altogether. It is quite obvious that an explanation from the quarters of the Ghana Football Association is required as a matter of urgency. They need to explain to us the circumstances surrounding the leakage of the documents to the media. We want to know whether they have been able to identify the source of the leak, when they discovered that the confidential report had been leaked and whether they made an effort to ensure that the leak did not get to the international media and for that matter the BBC. The BBC angle is particularly intriguing and needs to be interrogated further because their editorial decision to run with the story may have damaged the pristine image of the Black Stars beyond repair.

The question is did the Communication Director of the GFA make any attempt at all to dissuade his former colleagues at the BBC Africa Service from running with the story? Did Michael Oti Adjei speak with Mr. Darrah before dispatching his story to the UK? The GFA must level with us on this too going forward. I know Mr. Darrah very well and he is a very competent person. He has excelled as a journalist having worked with the BBC for 8 years and possesses qualities which invariably influenced the GFA to offer him the job in the first place. So I find it quite scandalous that after appointing an experienced journalist of the caliber of Mr. Ibrahim Sannie Darrah to handle our image across the world he failed quite spectacularly to stop the story about the use of witchcraft by our players against one another from making the international media circuit. Was it a matter of contrivance on his part or was it that he genuinely misread the enormity of the situation? Honestly I don't know. Darrah is an honorable man and he should be able to fill us in.

However what I do know is that he needs to work extremely hard if he is to repair the damage his decision to sleep behind the wheel could potentially cause us and quick too. Firstly he has to advise the GFA to as a matter of urgency roll out a campaign aimed at winning the heart and minds of the local and international media, the corporate sponsors of the Black Stars and by extension the corporate world. We need to move quickly to win back their trust and continued support pure and simple. Secondly he needs to work in concert with the Marketing Directorate of the GFA to cobble together a plan to re-brand the Black Stars.

The need to re-energize the Black Stars brand is most important because sponsors are quite careful not to associate their brand with a bunch of people who esteem black magic or witchcraft over hard work and discipline. Our sponsors would be seeking some form of clarity and explanation on the situation and would be looking for assurances that this unfortunate episode would not re-occur in the future. What they would want from the GFA is direct, precise and unambiguous answers and the latter should be forthcoming with those responses.

Thirdly Mr. Darrah should aim at building a strong and steady relationship with the media by holding regular interactions with them. Darrah was head-hunted (people who are head-hunted are seen to possess specialized skills which are unavailable on the market at the time of recruitment) to raise the profile of the GFA and to succeed in this venture he has to court the support of all the stakeholders of the game especially the local media. There is no doubt that his job is cut out for him but I trust that he is experienced and media savvy enough to get over this hurdle. Since the story broke over the weekend a lot of commentators have called on Goran Stevanovic to either resign or be forced out because they claim that what he wrote in the report linking his players to black magic had made his position as the coach of the Black Stars untenable. Personally I really don't care whether he goes or stays.

However if his dismissal or resignation would play a role in the efforts to repair the irreparable damage done to the image of the Black Stars in the eyes of the international football family so be it. In the meantime we encourage the GFA to go in the trajectory that would lead to the repairing of our badly damaged reputation brought about as a result of the leaked report. Going forward it is the hope of all and sundry that valuable lessons would be learned from this episode and also from our failure at the tournament so as to prevent the mistakes of the past from re-occurring in the future.

In Ghana and on the continent where football is the palliative from the peculiar and difficult challenges the people face in their daily lives, administrators of the beautiful game can ill-afford to destroy the one product that brings joy to them. For Mr. Kwesi Nyantakyi and his colleague at the helm of affairs this is an onerous responsibility they have to take seriously if Ghana is to remain an attractive brand that reels in corporate sponsorship.

The Author is the Executive Director of the Center for Investigative Reporting Ghana and a freelance journalist.

By Paa Kwesi Plange ([email protected])