.jpg "Abdul Razak — Primed for Stars job")
I’m the best for Black Stars job — Razak
A Former Ghana midfield general, Abdul Karim Razak, has thrown a big challenge to the Ghana Football Association (GFA) to be handed the Black Stars coaching job and promised to turn around the team’s fortunes, including an audacious vow to lead them to win the long-awaited fifth African title.
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In an interview with the Graphic Sports on phone yesterday, the man famously called ‘Golden Boy’ for his exploits which inspired the Stars to win the 1978 Africa Cup of Nations in Ghana, made a strong case for the hot seat which became vacant after the departure this month of the team’s Israeli coach, Avram Grant, after a two-year contract.
“The time has come for local coaches to be contracted to coach the Black Stars. Having won a continental trophy for the Black Stars in 1978 as a player, the time has come for me to make history by winning the continental trophy for Ghana as a coach.I hope this time the football authorities will take me serious and hand the team to me,” said the 1978 African best footballer.
A former assistant Black Stars coach during the tenure of Giuseppe Dossena, Razak put his best foot forward, saying he did not only have the pedigree, temperament and competence to handle the Stars, but also possessed the charisma required to inspire the team and win laurels for Ghana when given the same support and opportunities given to expatriate coaches.
“Most foreign coaches are always offered all the support anytime they are contracted to handle the Black Stars but they end up with no trophies. No matter your personality, you cannot be regarded as a reputable coach if you handle a team and end up winning no trophy,” he noted.
“To be able to handle the Black Stars and win trophies you need to have charisma and I can say that I have it in abundance.”
Recalling his last stint with the Stars as assistant to Dossena almost two decades ago, Razak said following the departure of the Italian in 2000, he expected to have been tasked to handle the team as a natural successor to his boss. “But less than three months after the departure of Dossena, I was booted out for reasons difficult to explain.
“ I am much more matured in coaching now, and I am hundred per cent sure that when offered the opportunity, I will break the jinx of continental failures that has bedevilled the Black Stars since 1982,” assured 60-year-old Razak.
The African legend, who was one of CAF’s special icons for the just-ended AFCON in Gabon, has won a number of laurels as coach for clubs in the West African sub-region, including league trophies at Dragons of Benin, four league titles at Stade Mali, as well as leading his former club Kumasi Asante Kotoko to Ghana’s Premier League title which ended Hearts of Oak’s stranglehold on the elite competition.