Emotional farewell for Afranie, Osam Duodu
The football family in Ghana will go through an emotional weekend as it bids the final farewell to two of its most accomplished coaches, Fred Osam Duodu and Emmanuel Kwasi Afranie, who died late last year.
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This afternoon, Osam Duodu will be buried at his hometown, Agona Nyakrom, while ‘Coach-hene’ Afranie will be laid to eternal rest at Bonwire even though the final funeral rites will be held at the Heroes Park at the Baba Yara Stadium in Kumasi.
Both coaches played very significant roles at different times in Ghana football, handling the national teams, as well as some of the top clubs in Ghana.
Significantly, most of Ghana’s most outstanding players of the last four decades passed through the hands of the two legendary tacticians, from greats such as Mohammed Polo, Abdul Razak, Opoku Afriyie, George Alhassan, Abedi Pele, Anthony Yeboah, Samuel Kuffour, Mohammed Gargo, Nii Odartey Lamptey, Michael Essien, Stephen Appiah, among others, some of whom are expected at both funerals this weekend.
Afranie, who died on November 9, 2016 at the age 73 years, handled almost all the male national teams -- Black Starlets, Black Satellites, Black Stars and Black Queens, who he guided to qualify for their maiden FIFA Women’s World Cup in the USA in 1999. He also coached and won the Premier League titles with both Accra Hearts of Oak (1997) and Kumasi Asante Kotoko (2005).
He also was assistant to Osam Duodu when Ghana won the 1978 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) on home soil.
Like Afranie, 78-year-old Osam Duodu also accomplished a lot with the Black Stars, winning the 1978 AFCON as head coach and assisting the late C.K. Gyamfi to conquer Africa four years later in Libya.
He won the African Under-20 title in 1993 and went on to win silver, months later at the FIFA World Youth Championship in Australia.
Both men were also very instrumental in the development and training of coaches in Ghana and Africa as CAF coaches instructors. They also unearthed many youthful talents who went on to become international stars.
Outside the field, they both brought their rich experience to bear on sports administration, with Osam Duodu once serving as General Secretary of the Ghana Football Association (GFA) in the late 1990s, while Afranie was once the Technical Director of the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
