Football. Quite an interesting sport, isn’t it?
A sport that takes you through all the emotions – joy, fear, anxiety, pain, heartbreak – just name it.
In Ghana, there are several sporting disciplines but this one, gosh, it gets the whole nation crazy. That is FOOTBALL.
The sport has given us many national heroes: Asamoah Gyan, Abedi Pele, C. K Gyamfi, Michael Essien, Tony Yeboah, Augustine Arhinful. The list is endless.
When it comes to football, we have been there before — we’ve conquered and dominated, and we’ve celebrated and cheered, and we were feared.
But not any more or are we still a powerhouse in Africa?
Has there ever been a time in the history of Ghanaian football when we can say that we played the game our way?
Did we ever have a style that was seen by many Ghanaians?
If that was the case, then what happened?
Although this is the lingering question, the bigger question is whether we are doing enough to produce the next big star.
Or what we are experiencing is a failure of those running the game in Ghana?
In our pomp, nations were very worried when they had to take on Ghana but now, those who do not seem to have an obvious football history all seem very capable of giving us a hard time. Comoros’ staggering 3-2 win over the Black Stars in the 2021 AFCON quickly comes to mind.
If anyone needed a sign to tell them that our football has gone off the rails, that match could serve as a very good one.
We may not affect policy, and we may not directly have a say in how football is run in Ghana. We are storytellers, and we just want to paint the picture of Ghana football in its current state for you.
While the nation’s football story may look gloomy now, there is a ray of hope somewhere. There is an organisation that is working really hard to produce quality footballers for the country’s benefit and the country has made use of some of their products.
We are talking about the Right to Dream Academy. The likes of Mohammed Kudus, Kamaldeen Sulemana, and Majeed Warris to mention a few have all passed through this place.
We caught up with the Chief Executive of Right to Dream Academy, Eddie Mensah, and he took us around their facility.
He explained the workings and principles of the academy and what it aimed to achieve when it was first set up.
“Our aim has always been to provide opportunities for talented boys and girls. We like to think of football as the easiest tool to provide opportunities for people across the length and breadth of the country,” he said.
We think opportunity requires preparation, talent and hard work that is why at Right To Dream, we talk about education, talent and character. That is the three pillars we stand on for the project and that is how our football is able to progress at the highest level,” Eddie Mensah added.
He also threw light on how they recruited players for the academy.
“I want to take this opportunity to state that at Right to Dream, we do not charge for what we do here. There are a lot fraudsters out there using our name and image for their gains,” he said.
“Our recruitment process is based on our pillars and that is, talent can be found everywhere and we comb the country and we scout over 20,000 students who are between the ages of 10 and 12. And we pick only 15 out of the 20,000 students we scout,” he ended.
While at the Right to Dream Academy, the Technical Director, Mas-Ud Didi Dramani who also serves as an assistant Black Stars coach spoke about how they were able to scout the next batch of talents for holistic nurturing and grooming.
“We comprehensively want to give everyone the right to dream and more especially we observe these kids keenly because talent is not just what you see but the ability to use science to also predict the future. So we only look for people we can nurture and not just the glittering raw talent of the person,” he said.
That was the lush and most ideal side of the development of sporting talents in Ghana. Now, let’s have a look at what talent honing looks like in these parts.
I caught up with the John Paintsil Football Academy led by Asante Kotoko legend, Eric Bekoe.
Unlike Right to Dream at New Akrade in the Eastern Region and their charmed life, the John Paintsil Football Academy, on the other hand, lives and plays dangerously.
The team operates right under the high-tension electricity lines at East Legon.
You can hear a buzzing sound all around, as though they are being made by bees. Rather, football education is done against the backdrop of active electricity current running through the lines and powering the national grid.
This setting calls for a different kind of training and the head coach of John Paintsil Football Academy admits he has to teach the players the fundamentals of football.
Some of the basics they lack is what we focus on. Football is scientific and an art now and football has it’s own language and that is what I focus on,” Eric Bekeo said.
Although this situation looks just as bad, Eric Bekoe describes this crop of players as privileged as things were not like this when he was coming up.
“If we had these privileges back then, I think some of us would have been much much better. The fundamentals of our football is very weak and when the basics are not there. It is very obvious at the top,” he started.
“Football is now all about passing and receiving and so that is what we have been missing and we need to rebuild the fundamentals of the game in the country but that has to be done from the grassroots,” he added.
I then pursued to understand the role of Colts football in the development of football stars in Ghana.
Samuel Anim Addo, an Executive Council Member of the Ghana Football Association, gave context to the growth of Colts football in the country and why it has now become a special project of the Ghana Football Association.
“Colts football is getting the attention it has never had since I started following and this is all thanks to the GFA. The dynamics have changed and the FA has a deliberate plan to promote colts football and it is clear. The euphoria is a bit different the dedication of the Ghana Football Association is there and we are not relenting,” he said.
Back in the day, colts football was the biggest thing but now, there are football academies and division teams who are actively involved in the recruitment and grooming of the next football superstar.
However, luckily, now there are football academies and division teams to help prepare the next crop of stars.
But obviously, there is a huge gap between a player from the colt level and the one in the academy. According to Anim Addo, colts football and academy football are not mutually exclusive facets of sports development but rather, they complement each other and fill gaps when need be.
We tried to see the difference between how we developed the next crop of football stars and what the Netherlands were doing.
Former caretaker manager of PSV Eindhoven, Ernest Faber threw more light on the difference he has seen with football development in Ghana and Holland.
“The system in Holland is the level of competition and there are tournaments for all age groups and these players grow in the categories and move from there. It is systematic. We have good pitches and big ones as such and that is the difference. In Ghana, you depend on your talent a lot and the language in coaching is the same but it is much better in my home country,” he said.
Let’s face this truth: not many will get their first taste of football education in Ghana at the academy level or even have the chance to train with a team in division three, two or one.
This means that many talents will come from Colts football and a system in which they will play on bad pitches and sometimes, with the wrong type of boots.
For many a talent, there is but a single dream: To play on the lush fields of Europe and if lucky, ply their trade with any of the elite clubs.
Talent is everywhere and football is embedded in the umbilical cord of the Ghanaian – boy or girl.
The dream to play and be seen will not die out, and the path to success for many will be narrow not because they are not talented but because that is the harsh reality of life.