Former Black Stars striker Augustine Arhinful has expressed concern over the excessive noise surrounding the team, which he believes contributed to Ghana’s struggles in the ongoing 2025 AFCON qualifiers.
Arhinful highlighted the controversy over the mismanagement of sports facilities, which resulted in CAF revoking the Baba Yara Sports Stadium’s license, and also pointed to Kurt Okraku’s address to the players ahead of the Sudan match as major factors that hurt the team’s morale.
He added that Ghana undermined its own efforts by failing to create a supportive environment for the players.
Augustine Arhinful spoke to Citi Sports following Ghana’s latest setback against Sudan.
I don’t want to call the FA president’s speech a rant.
He spoke to the players, yes, passionately, yes.
My issue with it was that, should that have been recorded and put it all out there in the public domain like that, should that have been the case?
Yes, he spoke to them, but this thing should be done privately.
We should not know what happens in there, Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho they do worse things in the dressing room.
How many times do we see them? Who are we trying to impress?
As for the field, you spoke about, yes, that one is a shame on all of us.
And that we need to begin to administer or put proper people at the Accra Sports Stadium and the Baba Yara Sports Stadium, in Takoradi or wherever, to maintain and keep that field in good shape at all times, the maintenance culture of Ghana.
Like you said, we have to look at the things that we speak about publicly and the things that we are not supposed to speak about.
And one thing that I saw that made me sad was that player came to come and take an ice chest and he’s a local player.
It really, really made me sad.
Where are we going to?
Where do you want to arrive?
Are these matters important to be discussed publicly? We had a game to be played. Should the FA president’s speech be the topic?
But it became a topic because they themselves put it out there.
They themselves put it out there to show what? To impress who? To impress who? And I don’t know, did the team win?
Only continue to speak or only continue and speak like that and also put in the public domain.
Or we are going to disband the team altogether.
The match marked the first of two consecutive 2025 AFCON qualifiers against Sudan, with the second leg scheduled for Monday, October 14, in Benghazi, Libya, at 13:00 GMT.
The Black Stars currently sit in third place in the group, having secured only 2 points from a possible nine across their three matches against Angola, Niger, and Sudan.
Ghana is aiming to qualify for the AFCON for the 25th time in the nation’s history.
