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We are back again! Back to base. An ignominious return to the
foreign-local coach banter all over again. Only this time we have
decorated the monkey and given it a new name-technical advisor- instead
of the head coach we all know.
Who are we deceiving? Who is the FA deceiving? Nobody but ourselves!!!
The talk about a new technical advisor to the Black Stars head coach
only confirms a confused nation with no badge of honour and dignity, no
sense of direction; no plan. The only plan is the plan to fail and
failure beckons with alacrity.
According to the FA, Kwasi Appiah is not competent. Sorry, they
didn’t say that. They suggested it by coming up with this new monkey of a
technical advisor position. And who are they considering- Milovan
Rajevac and one other nonentity Flemming Serritslev if the information
by the Graphic Sports is anything to go by.
How sick can we be as a country? And there is supposed to be a
three-man committee in place shopping for this new monkey of a position.
Milo who?
Our fascination with Serbia managers knows no shame. And our obsession for Milovan Rajevac is insanely dishonourable.
Milovan Rajevac was a nobody knew. We picked him up, changed his
diapers and made him so-called World Class coach and what did he do, he
dumped us, like a heartless woman would do to her man, and picked up the
highest offer from the highest bidder just a day after resigning his
position from the Black Stars. That was purely sentimental. I know.
Because no matter how i despise him, he still did a good job for the
Black Stars while at post.
But what happened to Milo after he left Ghana? He went to Saudi Club
of Al Ahli. He spent barely a year over there and was fired for non
performance.
In February 2011 he was appointed as coach of Qatar and was sacked in
August of that same same year. He spent barely six months at post. Milo
lost to India and Vietnam, two countries never known to playing
football let alone winning a game.
Qatar was embarrassed, in fact humiliated and sent Milo packing back to his native Serbia. He had since been unemployed.
In September 2011 he applied for the job of the manager of the
Egyptian national team. He was shortlisted together with Bob Bradley.
The Egyptian FA settled on Bradley and left Milo who is still without a
job.
Today he is being considered as a technical advisor to coach Kwasi Appiah. What…!!!! I nearly wrote nonsense.
Let’s look at this scenario. Egypt knows a good coach when it sees
one. The north African country selected Bradley over Milo and the former
had a stupendous World Cup qualification campaign until it met Ghana.
They had never lost a match until they met Ghana. And they never lost
against Ghana either. They were humiliated and annihilated in a 7-3
aggregate scoreline by a Ghana coach who was considered inferior by his
own people ahead of that game.
Appiah qualified Ghana to the world cup with panache; scored over 20
goals in that campaign and conceded just six, a qualification record
that surpassed what his two predecessors- Ratomir Dujkovic and Milovan
Rajevac- had done.
Fast forward to the World Cup in Brazil and I am first to admit that
Appiah made some fundamental mistakes in the game against US which we
lost by 2-1 but i had no doubts in my mind that Ghana would qualify for
the next stage of the competition if the men at the FA and at the
Ministry had done their elementary jobs.
And I state emphatically that those mistakes did not include the use
of Kwadwo Asamoah on the left side of defence. Many have attempted to
explain the difference between a left full back and a left wing back
position and why Asamoah was fit for a wing back position and not a full
back position. But the fact still remains that unlike Germany 2006 and
South Africa 2010, our infamous left back debacle was no longer a
problem in Brazil 2014. Kwadwo Asamoah had played that role so well,
created two goals of the four we scored at the World Cup and defended so
well, better than any of the so-called defenders we had taken in
previous tournaments.
If Appiah had to take the flak for that so be it but the point is in
the game of football the comfort of some players in specific positions
are and can be sacrificed for the good of the team and we have seen that
in Essien for Chelsea, Valencia for Manchester United and many others.
Why not Asamoah?
Why Appiah used Daniel Opare in the US game and kept him for the
entire duration; why he brought on Albert Adomah were fundamental
mistakes i struggle to understand.
He corrected those mistakes in the game against Germany and what was
the result? That game was the most talked about game in Brazil and
adjudged as the most competitive. Ghana should have won that game but
Germany were lucky to snatch a point from the jaws of defeat. It was the
only point dropped by the eventual winners.
Ghana needed to win against Portugal to qualify to the next stage and
what happened. We all know that don’t we? The FA chairman was accused
of fixing matches; the ministry had not paid the players their
appearance fees. There was fisticuffs; players had turned against
management members. It was complete anarchy in camp- one that Appiah had
no control over.
How in the world was he to lead a team like that to beat Portugal and
to qualify to the next stage? He needed a miracle to do so. He was only
a man. If he had just the same support Dujkovic had in 2006 or Rajevac
in 2010 I bet the story would have been different in 2014.
If the FA thinks in spite of the circumstances Appiah should have met
his target of a semi-final birth at the World Cup, they are free to
sack him instead of this huge insult of getting him a Milovan Rajevac
caliber of a technical advisor. I feel insulted by that disgusted all
the more at the mention of Flemming Serritslev. He is like a gold
digger, a pauper looking for a pot of gold. And guess what he may be
handed the pot of gold and given all the support, because he is a
foreigner.
Check out his CV. His best was an assistant coach of the Danish
National Team. He had stints with the Danish U-21 national team and with
a club in Iran which he failed to impress.
That is the caliber of person we are going to pay thousands of dollars to in the name of a technical advisor position.
[Credit: Myjoyonline
