Kwabena Yeboah, legend or villain?
The World Cup is finally over and as some people will be ruing it, others would be jubilating, not necessarily because their team won but because they’ll have the attention of their significant others again. For others like me, it would be the pain of seeing those I wanted to win losing in such a painful manner on the final day.
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However, most if not all, football enthusiasts agree that this was one of the most entertaining world cup tournaments not only in terms of the quality of football but also the entire vibe and feel of the tournament which took place in what is considered by most as the spiritual home of football Brazil.
The Brazilians endured the most embarrassment ever when their national team, the Seleçao, suffered a 7-1 humiliating defeat in the hands of Germany the eventual winners of the tournament. Thankfully, Argentina did not win it as that would have been more terrible a loss to the Brazilians than even the humbling defeat to the Germans.
Talking about embarrassments bring back memories of how Ghana’s players, FA/team officials and the sports ministry bumbled their way into and out of Brazil in a manner that brought international opprobrium to the nation.
Though the Black Stars exited the tournament at the group stage of the competition, there was one Ghanaian who remained in the tournament for two weeks more and to the very end in the person of the legendary Kwabena Yeboah.
You have to hear this. When I was growing up, one of the most prominent newspaper sports journalists in this country was Kwabena Yeboah. He was in the class of the likes of Sam Doku, Paapa Painstil and others who wrote some of the most fearless articles in the press.
I used to buy the Africa Sports and a couple of other sports papers every Monday morning on my way to school at Madina DC 2 Middle School just so, and among others of course. I would read Kwabena Yebaoh’s scathing articles in his world famous column on the second page.
His penchant for using verbose language was very attractive to me and many of my peers who were still learning to build our vocabulary in English.
Typically, the very first two paragraphs of Mr. Yeboah’s column every single week in those days had to be read with the dictionary by our side else we would read and not understand much. But we still loved it so much.
In those days, there were other sports journalists who appeared on television such as Tina Moses, Edward Faakye, Kweku Ofosu Asare, Kwabena Agyepong, Moses Foh Amoaning, Simpson who either hosted or appeared on one television sports show or another as guest.
Thus when Kwabena Yeboah eventually made it to Sports Highlights after Tina Moses, Edward Faakye and the Simpson (if my memory is right in that order) as its host, we knew our legend had arrived.
In the days before DStv, Sports Highlights was the most attractive programme on television for all sports fans. In the days after DStv, Sports Highlights continued to remain the biggest sports programme on television for all sports fans. Up till today, Sports Highlights is among the most watched programmes on GTV and on television in Ghana.
We could not wait till Monday evening to see Kwabena Yeboah on the screen talking about local sports and then when he moves into the last few minutes where foreign sports (football) would be shown, we paid close attention.
We loved his flowery language – especially where he took to the liking of a player and decides to sing his praise to the heavens and beyond.
Kwabena Yeboah also got into television football commentary and just as he did in the Africa Sports and on Sports Highlights, he brought some verbosity to running commentary. His world famous copyrighted(hopefully)“oluwaaaaa” scream whenever a goal was scored was both music to the ear and a monotonous annoyance depending on which of the teams you supported.
Simply put, he took his “oluwaaaaa” a tad too far, especially when you want to know who scored and he kept screaming.
We relied very heavily on the statistics presented us with by Yeboah during Sports Highlights and also on the commentaries so we could add to our points to argue about football and other sports with our colleagues, peers and friends.
The catch though is that time, modernity, technology, the Internet and social media has caught up with all of us including Kwabena Yeboah such that the facts we give are easily verifiable in real time.
Kwabena Yeboah has had the opportunity to run commentary in many tournaments and in many countries and thankfully, he got the chance to run the commentary for the Africa Union of Broadcasters (AUB) feed during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. What that meant was that his commentary was heard in many other countries in Africa apart from Ghana.
There were a few issues that some people had with his style of running commentary at that tournament and how he uniquely pronounced some players’ names especially because people were now exposed to many other styles of commentary from continuously watching leagues and other football competitions from around the world. Above all, some of the facts he gave during commentary at that tournament were also challenged.
Be that as it may, when the 2014 World Cup rolled in, Mr. Kwabena Yeboah was in commentary position for most of the matches on the AUB feed again. These days, people watch football with one eye on the television screen and another on their computer, tablet or phone opened to Twitter or Facebook (and even Google) to comment about every single thing that would happen both on and off the field.
As it turned out again, some of the facts and statistics Mr. Yeboah churned out in some of the matches were not correct and so he was taken on by some viewers through tweets and Facebook posts. For example, I almost fell off my chair when he mentioned it more than twice that Mirosalv Klose goal against Brazil took his tally to a new record of 17 goals at the World Cup when it was 16 goals!
Not only the facts and stats but also sometimes his pronunciation of some of the players names left his viewers wondering. For example, when all other commentators pronounce Garay as GARAI and only Mr. Yeboah pronounces it GAREY it does leave much to be desired, no?
Some viewers on Facebook and Twitter also thought he overdid his praise for some players, especially Lionel Messi, during the World Cup. For that one, I am sure I would be guiltier than Yeboah if I were in his shoes, is all I can say.
Indeed, Mr. Yeboah trended on social media than most other Ghanaians who were part of the FIFA World Cup 2014 which you can check from this link
https://twitter.com/search?q=%22Kwabena%20Yeboah%22&src=tren for some of the comments made about his commentary.
Indeed, some of the views expressed were disrespectful to Kwabena Yeboah and could have been sanitized; however, the fact that some wrong statistics were thrown at viewers incessantly, it is not too difficult to understand the frustrations of some of the people who commented.
It must however be said that there is no legend of commentary greater than Kwabena Yeboah in the modern time. My father’s generation had the Joe Larteys, Nii Anum Thompsons and the like and we also have our Yeboah.
He may be seen as a villain by some who may be too young to know the exploits of Kwabena Yeboah, but I would argue that based on what he has done over the years, he is more of a legend than villain regardless of his performance at the 2014 World Cup!