body-container-line-1
01.07.2017 Editorial

Kwasi Appiah’s shambolic preparations

By Ghanaian Chronicle
Kwasi Appiahs shambolic preparations
01.07.2017 LISTEN

The Black Stars will be engaged in two international friendly games against Mexico and USA. The Coach of the senior national team, James Kwasi Appiah, picked all his top players, except for the Ayew brothers and Daniel Amartey, who were excused in order to focus on pre-season training with their European teams.

Rather curiously, the technical handlers of both the Mexican and American national teams decided to pick second string teams for the friendly.

The Black Stars, on Wednesday, faced a weakened Mexican side at the Houston NRG Stadium and lost by a lone goal. The first team of Mexico is currently participating in the FIFA Confederations Cup in Russia.

USA Head Coach Bruce Arena has named the final 23-man squad to face Ghana in the international friendly.

Coach Bruce Arena selected promising young talents from the local league to play against the Black Stars at the Pratt & Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field in Connecticut tomorrow. He refused to pick any foreign-based player, with the excuse that the European-based players needed to rest after a hectic league season.

Coach Bruce Arena was also of the view that the European-based players needed to rest, since the pre-season training with their various clubs was just about to begin.

In the case of Ghana, Coach Kwasi Appiah called his best squad for friendlies against weakened sides, who are rather using the games to test their fringe players.

Much as the Black Stars remain a bogey team for the USA, Coach Bruce Arena will not assemble all his best cards just to defeat Ghana, but rather, is looking at giving the young talents an opportunity to play at the highest level.

Unlike the USA and Mexico, our mentality is to win at all costs, and so we have to use our Europe-based players, who, after a long season, came to honour the AFCON qualifiers against Ethiopia some few weeks back. The Chronicle believes we should give them a break, so that they can rest for the coming pre-season.

No wonder some of the European clubs refused to release players like the Ayew brothers and Daniel Amartey, to allow them rest adequately and focus on their pre-season training.

According to reports, Coach James Kwasi Appiah was frustrated after Black Stars' 1-0 defeat to Mexico on Wednesday, but it wasn’t the result that seemed to bother him most.

He accused referee Baldomero Toledo of using profanity on one of his players, and also questioned why the organisers assigned a Mexican-American official to oversee a game involving the Mexican national team.

“Talking about the referee, I was really, really shocked that in a game like this they would allow a Mexican to be the center referee, when we were playing (against) Mexico,” Kwasi Appiah said in his post-match news conference.

“I'm really, really surprised. I never knew about it until after the game. I heard that he was a Mexican-American. I mean, it doesn’t make any difference. If you're Mexican, you're Mexican.

Referee Toledo grew up in Mexico, but came to the United States as a young man. He is listed as American by FIFA, and has officiated games in MLS since 2004, and has been a FIFA referee since 2007.”

The Chronicle rather finds it strange that the technical handlers and GFA officials didn't know the nationality of the referee. Wasn't there a pre-match conference, where all these facts would have been be discussed?

It seems like the score line remains a bother to coach Appiah, and not whether his tactics worked or not. For God's sake, this is just a friendly match, and should not be a win at all costs for Coach Appiah. He lost the plot the moment he selected his first team to play against weakened sides.

In a related development, The Chronicle has picked information that the US Embassy denied over 40 sports journalists and administrators visas to travel with the Black Stars to the USA.

It is rather strange that over 40 sports journalists will want to follow the Black Stars to the USA to report on merely a friendly match.

Where were all these sports journalists when other national teams of the nation were doing the short circuits on the African Continent, when, sometimes, even officials following such teams had to report on games, because there was no reporter with the team?

Is it that the Black Stars has become the cash cow, and so all the other national teams have been neglected?

A word to the wise…

body-container-line