Ghana’s senior football team, the Black Stars, are on the threshold of qualifying for their third successive World Cup in style.
With a 6-1 victory from the first leg at the Baba Yara Stadium in Kumasi on October 19, qualifying for Brazil 2014 seems a done deal for the Stars. At least that is what most pundits, as well as the teeming followers of the Stars, believe.
To them, it will be one of the most illogical developments in football should the Pharaohs overturn that heavy deficit and deny Ghana a place among the world’s elite in Brazil next year.
The Stars themselves have not been carried away by the big lead and advantage they have from the first game, as all the players reported on time for the week’s training in Istanbul, Turkey.
Even the decision by FIFA, football’s world governing body, that the match be played in Cairo, despite the security concerns raised by the Ghana Football Association (GFA), has not affected the team psychologically, as reports from their training camp indicate that every player invited for the match is fit and ready to die for Mother Ghana.
The Daily Graphic thus urges all Ghanaians, both home and abroad, to come together to support the team, both physically and spiritually, to succeed in their quest to join the big names in football for the football fiesta in Brazil next year.
Winning will not only confirm the Stars, who became the pride of Africa at the last World Cup staged in South Africa in 2010 where they reached the quarter-finals, as being among the best in the world but also put the head coach, Kwasi Appiah’s name in the history books as the first Ghanaian coach to lead the senior national team to a World Cup.
For a country that prides itself as a strong and passionate football nation but which, unfortunately, has been heavily reliant on foreign coaches for the Stars, Appiah’s achievement will stand tall in history, as it will further boost the image of Ghana football after Sellas Tetteh led the Satellites to win the World Youth Championship in 2009.
It is for this reason that the Daily Graphic finds it an insult to the dignity of Ghanaians calls from certain quarters for a technical advisor or technical support for Coach Appiah.
The suggestion for the engagement of an expatriate technical director is absolutely unnecessary and a waste of the taxpayers’ toil.
