The Ghana Black Stars Has Become "Black without Stars".

Whether bronze medal or no position, they will take their monies for no job done.

In Ghana, it is not invalid to say that football provides the better platform for both players and supporters to demonstrate their sense of belongness and patriotism. In fact, apart from party politics and religion, football is a joiner of heart and blood and people are very emotional in it. This is the reason why almost every citizen of Ghana supports the national team, Ghana Black stars.

To meet the national emotional needs, Ghana keeps on increasing its investment in the sports sector particularly the national football team but yet to see any significant returns. Perhaps the only returns have been the increasing rate of corruption in the football governing body, the Ghana Football Association as well as the ministry of sports. In fact, billions of cedis have been thrown into sports by past and present governments.

For about 30 years or so, the senior national team had not been able to win any major trophy for the country despite the continuous support from the government and ordinary citizen. The humongous monies given to these players over the years could have transformed the economy of Ghana significantly. We still do not have enough infrastructure in the various sectors of the economy including sports itself yet we continue to follow our hearts and emotions by showering these players who are largely billionaires in their clubs, with money. What is painful to me is that most of these players have not been able to invest the money gotten from playing for Ghana into the country. They are rather enjoying their opulence elsewhere or unrepentantly satisfying their insatiable sexual libidos. Beautiful white ladies are really making it big time with some of these footballers yet our country is suffocating to death.

In the wake of all these development, any government that tries to make reforms in the GFA, normally suffer by getting indomitable rebellious bastardization either by some ignorant football pundits or political opponents. This has put the GFA in a strategic dark position to siphon our national cake in the name of getting us positive results. Think about the major investment we have done ahead of major tournaments like World Cup and African cup tournaments like the just ended 2017 African cups of nations held in Gabon. Can GFA ever account to the people of Ghana what profit we make out of these investments?

In any case, GFA is taking advantage of the too much polarisation and politicisation of our national discourse and will continue to give us pain until we think alike.

From 2006 up to date, the monies wasted at tournaments could have built more than hundred factories for this country that could have employed more than fifty percent of the unemployed youth in this country.

The most painful thing is how we condone and connive with foreign coaches to execute this agenda of "loot and share".

We pay them chunk of monies for very obvious reasons and they give us worst results. Slavery has not ended in Africa. We are working for foreigners. Yes! Ghana is still under slavery. I will say it and say it again.

I always believe that we are capable of doing it ourselves. Review the work of all the Ghanaian coaches that have handled the Black stars and juxtapose that with the foreign coaches. You would realized that our own did far better. If you have forgotten, just look at the work of Kwasi Appiah and Selas Tettey among others and get what am talking about.

The preference of foreign coaches to local coaches is part of why our local league is unattractive to the football world. The foreign coaches we employ more often show ample disrespect to our local players. They search for players in Europe and do not care to monitor the local league. Avram Grant is just an example. What has he contributed to the local league? Not even a former president of Ghana even through the much talked about exgratia, can get that quantum of money this coach will send away from the shores of Ghana. Really pathetic!

What happened in the just ended African cup of nations should not surprise anybody. That has been the trend though this one seems to be more painful and humiliating. We lack foresight and pretend to have the tactics. I don't see patriotism in the national team and GFA. All I see is skilful illegal business. The reality is that, the team has now become "black without stars" which is tantamount to national shame and not national team.

Worse things will happen to us if we don't take very serious difficult but right decisions.

Denis Andaban
[email protected]
www.gh2online.com