Why not a Ghanaian coach?

We are in a political season, I know. But we are also about 10 months away from the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations in South Africa. I'm not really a sports enthusiast or expert, but with the bitter taste left in my mouth by the Gabon/Equatorial Guinea debacle, I think it's in order to give my opinion on the future of the Black Stars. Specifically on who our next coach should be.

I am an advocate for a Ghanaian being appointed as Black Stars coach. I understand that competence should be the number one criteria but I think I would still have an argument there. The Ghana Football Association is run by Ghanaians, the players are all Ghanaians, so why must we have a non-Ghanaian coach. It's something that I don't understand.

I've heard people make the argument that local coaches lack the competence. I totally disagree. Before Goran Stevanovic became Black Stars coach, he had coached only one Serbian club and had served as an assistant coach of another. Coaches like Sir Cecil Jones Attuquayefio, Herbert Addo, Osam Doudu, Sellas Tetteh have more impressive resumes. Ghanaian coaches have led our junior teams to African and world championships. Matter of fact, ALL our four Africa cup of nations trophies came when the Black Stars were being coached by Ghanaians. Others say that our coaches lack the ability to manage the egos of our players. Well I say that no professional player needs his ego managed. European clubs like Chelsea have had managers younger and less experienced than some of the players but discipline was not a problem. Or are we saying our players will not respect a black man? Preposterous!

The argument that only foreign coaches have ensured our qualification to the World Cup would have been solid if we had qualified with our foreign coaches in the 1990s. My opinion is that the Black Stars team of 2006 and 2010 was one of, if not, the best in Africa. And with the teams in our qualifying group not been that strong, qualification was no miracle. However, these same foreign coaches could not lead this phenomenal team to lift the African Cup. The worst culprit was Claude Le Roy in 2008.

I think the time is right to stop looking down on ourselves. Cote d'Ivoire with more European-based stars reached the final of this year's tournament with an Ivorian coach. We can even decide to appoint a triumvirate of local coaches to manage the team like Nigeria did sometime back. In my opinion the foreign coaches are not worth the large sums of money we give them when we have a good team that only needs tactical direction and discipline. I think a Ghanaian coach can do that....at half the price.

Jerome Wematu Kuseh
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