Last Sunday was another sad day for soccer–crazy Ghanaian fans as the Black Stars failed to lift the ultimate at the just-ended AFCON 2015 in Equatorial Guinea.
It was a painful defeat as the Black Stars played their hearts out and didn’t deserve to lose. But that is football for you. Once our boys could not translate their superiority into goals within regulation time, it only meant victory could go to either side in the penalty-shootout.
To rely on chance, like what happened on Sunday, is not the best.
It is even more painful that Ghana took a commanding lead in the shoot-out only for the Ivorians to upstage us in the final analysis.
So many arguments have gone on as to why certain players like Dede and Agyemang Badu, who were involved in that memorable shoot-out with Brazil in the Under-20 World Cup in Cairo in 2009, were not made to take their chances after Jordan and Wakasso had given Ghana the lead following misses by Bony and Tallo.
I don’t think Afriyie Acquah and Frank Acheampong went there to miskick. I am sure the coaches trusted they would deliver. But it was not to be.
Have Ronaldo and Messi, the two greatest players of their generation and real sharp shooters, not missed penalty kicks before? Did our own Asamoah Gyan not miss a penalty against Uruguay in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa? Was it not the reaction from Ghanaians, especially insults heaped on him, that made Asamoah Gyan vow not to take penalty kicks again?
Remember the behaviour of Ivorian Gervinho on Saturday. He missed his kick during the shoot-out with Zambia in the 2012 finals at Gabon/ Equatorial Guinea that cost Ivory Coast the Cup. He refused to be part of the penalty kickers and went to hide behind the goalpost to pray to his God.
All said and done, it was a very memorable AFCON in which nobody gave Ghana any chance to reach the finals. In fact, after the defeat to Senegal in the opening match, Ghanaians lost hope of making it to the knockout stages. But the unexpected win over Algeria in the second match revived the hopes of many.
From then, confidence started to rise high in the Ghanaian camp. They started to play the type of game which Ghana was noted for. No wonder apart from the ultimate, Ghana carried away all the individual accolades.
Black Stars performance and history
I sincerely believe that the Black Stars we paraded at AFCON 2015 have been the greatest and the most solid since 1992. The goalkeeper may not be the best, but looking at the totality of their performance and their ages, I am sure they are our hope for the future.
I couldn’t believe the ease with which they could contain Yahya Toure, Gervinho and Bony. These world-class players were played out of the game and they could only thank their gods for the penalty shoot-out.
In the end, what I saw to be most painful was the fact that history was allowed to repeat itself. I thought it should have been a revenge mission.
When we played the Elephants in the Senegal 1992 finals, we were handicapped. Abedi Pele, the soul and heart of the team, the maestro and captain, was disqualified from the finals for bagging two successive yellow cards.
Despite his absence, the boys were determined to bring the cup back to Ghana after 10 years. They played a determined game but the penalty shoot-out did not go their way. We lost 10 – 11.
Then came 2015. Our inspirational captain, Asamoah Gyan, was down with malaria when the competition began. But after losing to Senegal, he braved the odds. Even though half-fit, he played against the dreaded Algerians and got the only goal in the dying minutes to give Ghana a lifeline.
Following the injury inflicted on him by the Guinean goalkeeper, Kung-fu style, almost at the end of the quarter-final match, he couldn’t play in the semi-final win over the hosts, Equatorial Guinea.
He came back for the final match. But it was a case of the soul being willing but the body being weak. Just like we missed Abedi Pele in the 1992 final, a half-fit Asamoah Gyan could not conjure any magic for us to carry the day within 90 minutes.
Feeling of champions
So after being so close, as the Daily Graphic put it on Monday, we were yet so far away. Now it is 33 years since Ghana tasted a continental glory. A whole generation does not know how it feels to be African champions.
It was not so for older Ghanaians who were part of the early history of the Black Stars, who brought so much joy to football-loving fans. With Osagyefo Dr Nkrumah as President and Ohene Djan as the Director of Sports, Ghana was able to raise a football team that was simply unbeatable in any football arena on the continent.
Even though Ghana did not play in the first three editions of the Nations Cup in Sudan 1957 in, Egypt in 1959 and Ethiopia in 1962, the Black Stars were ready in 1963 as hosts.
One can say that the first three editions were purely a North African affair but through the efforts of Dr Nkrumah and Ohene Djan, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) gave the hosting rights to Ghana for the 1963 edition.
After two weeks of keen competition, Ghana and Sudan met in the finals at the Accra Sports Stadium. In fact I was part of the crowd that thronged the stadium to see history being made, having run away from the boarding house at the West African Secondary School (WASS), then just only 18 years old.
Despite the heroics of the Sudanese goalkeeper, Sabit Dodoo, Ghana could not be denied her first continental title. Players like Kwadwo Mfum, Ben Acheampong, Kwame Adarkwa, Addo Odametey and Dodoo Ankrah were simply immaculate.
It was the 1963 squad that also carried Ghana’s flag high at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, reaching the quarter-finals; the first African nation to do so.
By the time of the 1965 Tunisia Nations Cup, most of the players of the 1963 squad had given place to what Ohene Djan referred to as the “twinkle, twinkle little stars.” They included the then incomparable Osei Kofi, Jones Attuquayefio, Bismarck Odoi and Ganiyu Salami. They took Tunisia by storm and defended the cup won in Accra in 1963. After this triumph, there appeared to be a conspiracy to use unorthodox means to stop Ghana. Thus in the 1968 finals in Ethiopia, even though Ghana had easily beaten DR Congo in the group stages, when we met in the finals there was open robbery as DR Congo was helped to carry the day.
Then came the 1970 finals in the Sudan. Again, Ghanaian players were the favourites with players like Ben Eshun, Robert Mensah, Kwasi Owusu, Sunday Ibrahim and Malik Jabir. But in the finals, against Sudan, everything was done to ensure victory went to the hosts.
After 1970, Ghana football went into the wilderness, with the 1966 cup taking its toll on football administration in the country. It was not until 1978 that Ghana hosted and won the cup for the third time with players like Golden Boy Abdul Razak and Mohammed Polo.
Ghana repeated the dose in 1982 in Libya when we hurriedly assembled a team that included George Alhassan, Koli Abbrey, Hesse Odamtenn, Kofi Badu, Owusu Mensah, John Bannerman and Abedi Pele, then aged only 17.
But for Flt. Lt J.J. Rawlings seizing power on the last day of December 1981, Ghana would not have taken part in that tournament.
From 1963 to 1982, it was always joy for Ghanaians at each AFCON. Now we have gone 33 years without a cup. Will the smiles be back in 2017? I hope so.
