Can we listen to Avram Grant?
He rarely talks publicly. Even when he is being drawn into an arena to defend himself, he prefers to keep quiet. But last week he used four minutes to make a welcome and mature statement on the current rumblings between the Ghana Football Association (GFA) and what I prefer to call the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
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Avram Grant strongly put Ghana football on notice when he warned that “if we wait till the last moment, what happened in Brazil will happen again”. He said he was not interested in who was right or wrong. In proverbial words, the head coach further warned that we could be involved in “a successful operation but with the patient dead”.
These are not only great words, but they come from someone who knows what he is talking about. Having being involved in football, even at very high levels, Mr Grant said in all his years of football he had never heard of players buying their own tickets to enable them to travel to feature in national football assignments.
We are now entering that very interesting and exciting part of the next FIFA World Cup tournament. On October 7, we are pitched against Uganda. At another stage we would be playing against Egypt.
We should not forget that both Uganda and Egypt have grudges and scores to settle with the Black Stars. In 1978, the Black Stars stopped the Ugandan Cranes from annexing the African Cup when we beat them in the finals.
The Black Stars almost disgraced the Egyptian national team before the last world cup. Egypt as a country was in political turmoil and crisis that swept some Arab countries. Now, the Ugandans are back and they surely would be back with vengeance.
We appear to be anxious to create a non-existent crisis in our football. A crisis from which no one stands to gain. I do hope that the effects of the unnecessary squabble between the Sports Ministry and the GFA have not already started showing in our last qualifying match against Rwanda, when the Black Stars drew 1-1 with their national team at the Accra Sports Stadium. I clearly heard one of the Black Stars players who did not feature in the game saying in a radio interview that the Stars did very well “under difficult circumstances”.
He did not elaborate, but he surely had in mind the aeroplane tickets they had to buy. It is good that our players and technical handlers are not directly involved in the media war although they are directly affected. We have come a long way to reach our present level in world football.
The fact that we have not won any international trophy at the senior team level does not mean we are not doing well.
Since 2006, we have always qualified to participate in all world cup tournaments. These tournaments are played among 32 nations world-wide. This feat has brought financial rewards, as well as unpaid-for advertisement and branding. Nobody needs to be told that sports, especially football, is our national passion. It unites us and waters down the political divisions in the country.
We are about to set an African record for being the only team to appear four consecutive times in the World Cup tournament, and so this is not the time for us to be taunting and pinching each other. It is a truism that when two elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
A lot of people depend on football for a living, and all of us benefit, one way or the other. Even as referees we have to depend upon football and football matches. Refereeing is part of football.
A former chairman of the GFA once said football had four legs to stand on. These being coaching, administration, medicine and refereeing. What can football referees do without football?
What almost all lovers of our football are calling for is the need for both parties to dialogue at boardroom levels and jaw-jaw instead of the media confrontations that come from time to time.
It can even be a tripartite meeting involving representatives of the players. It is also important that our media, especially the sporting media, continue to show patriotism and maturity in their handling of the issue.
Ghana sports and our sports journalists have a lot to gain from a quarrel-free football. Most of them live by their pens covering football matches, players and largely football news.
As a journalist, I remember that during the ‘culture of silence days of the military regimes, especially during the PNDC long rule, most of our journalists sought salvation in establishing and writing for sports papers.
We should, therefore, protect and grow our sports, especially our football for us to continue to have our employment and jobs.
During the past week when our Black Stars players were forced to procure their own travelling tickets, there developed some bad news surrounding the future captainship of the national team.
This is not a good topic for our sports commentators and journalists to concentrate on. We should kill that issue and nip it in the bud. We had a similar problem sometime ago and it greatly affected the unity and progress of the national team.
We are in a democracy and we have a free press in Ghana, but a free press should have a colour of patriotism and nationalism.
Meanwhile, we should not forget the given to us all by our Head Coach, Avram Grant, that we should not wait till the last moment before we attend to the apparent impasse between the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the GFA.
We had what clearly appeared to be the best Black Star team for Brazil 2014. But we had what has been our worst performance in the World Cup tournaments. Why? Because we had a lot of problems that took the attention from playing football to other issues.
Not all the problems so created have been solved. Therefore, this is not the time that we should do anything to add to them. Let us for once listen to Coach Avram Grant. A word to the wise is in Avram Grant’s admonitions.