'Play Stars Against Top Opponents'

Sly Senyoh

An ardent fan of the Black Stars, Michael Senyoh (Sly), has questioned the lack of quality friendlies for the Stars in spite of the team’s rising world-wide fame and reputation as the best African team in the last two World Cups.

He said Ghana emerged the best team at the Germany 2006 World Cup and repeated the dose at South Africa 2010 to earn the necessary respect of other nations, yet these laudable credentials had not attracted quality teams to want to play the Stars in friendlies.

He said the reason could be attributed to poor planning by the team’s managers, or the excuse of lack of funds to arrange to play against the high-profile teams.

In a chat with the Graphic Sports at the weekend, Sly noted with disappointment that the lack of quality friendly matches continued to draw back Ghana in the FIFA rankings at a time that their World Cup record should have put them ahead of all the African teams.

“The simple reason is that the Black Stars are not playing high-profile friendly matches. They need to begin to play the best national teams of the world to attract that recognition and subsequent top ranking by FIFA”, Sly stressed.

He, therefore, appealed to the managers of the Black Stars to take proper advantage of the FIFA free days by planning ahead of time to get high-profile opponents for the team in the future.

Sly said friendlies against teams like Jamaica, Latvia, Bosnia and Saudi Arabia hardly added anything to the pedigree of Ghana, unlike those games against Brazil and The Netherlands, even though the Stars lost both.

“But better it is to lose to teams like Brazil and The Netherlands or any such soccer big shots than even to win, or worse still lose to those like Saudi Arabia”, he lamented.

Sly, who had globe-trotted following the Stars to most of their international games, was hopeful that current efforts to get England to play Ghana in an international friendly next year would succeed and implored the team’s managers not to relent.