Sports
Eyes on the relays
France staged a historic and perhaps, the most exciting Olympic Games opening ceremony yesterday to kick start the Paris 2024 Games.
For the first time in the history of the Games, Paris staged an impressive opening ceremony outside a stadium.
When it was first announced, a few doubting ‘Thomases’ were alarmed over the arrangement put in place and others over security.
But pessimists were silenced with yesterday’s spectacular event that saw athletes parade in boats along the Seine River.
The ceremony marked a shift from the usual scenes of athletes marching around athletics tracks and dressed resplendently in attires designed in national colours with placards indicating names of their countries.
Yesterday’s invention gave participants and viewers a rare vibrant river parade that travelled through the heart of the French capital.
The river Seine replaced the traditional track with the iconic Paris landmarks creating a beautiful scene for the event.
The athletes were grouped with their national teams on the boats and ultimately arrived opposite to where official protocols were conducted, and the Olympic cauldron lit to open the 2024 Games officially.
In all, nearly 100 boats carried approximately 10,500 athletes.
As the various teams filed past, curiously, one could predict or imagine how the medal table may be like by August 11 when the Games end.
Team America was among the heavily represented sides in this edition with others including Great Britain, Australia, the Netherlands and others also parading very large contingents.
But there was also the group of countries whose numbers could compete for the smallest team prize tag at the Games, if there was one.
Ghana was in this particular group with nine members, yet poised to make an impact.
What that impact might be is what may keep Ghanaians glued to their television sets to watch which discipline and athlete would prove skeptics wrong.
Team Ghana is making appearances in athletics (men’s 100m, 200m, 4x100m), women’s high jump and swimming.
Athletes expected in action for Team Ghana comprises of Benjamin Azamati and Abdul- Rasheed Saminu (men’s 100m and men’s 4x100m), Rose Amoaniwaa Yeboah (women’s high jump), Harry Stacey (men’s 100m freestyle) and Joselle Mensah (women’s 50m freestyle).
Their times and records obviously do not present them as medal prospect, however the men’s 4x100m relay has shown much promise with their performance at the Africa Games where they lost narrowly in the finals of the 4x100m event to Nigeria in a photo finish.
The Nigerians ended on 38.41 seconds with Ghana crossing the tape on 38.43 seconds.
But they headed to Bahamas to book the Paris 2024 ticket with an improved time of 38.29 seconds to win the Olympic Qualifying Round 2 race.
That feat also recorded better individual times from each of the athletes that featured.
The height of Ghanaian optimism was the announcement of an automatic qualification to the semi-finals of the 4×100 metre race at the Games for being part of the 16 countries to have qualified from the World Relay Championship in Bahamas in May this year.
It gives the quartetsome vim ahead of the semifinal showdown, but must be aware of the nature of competition at that level.
With this background, Ghanaians have every reason to be optimistic about the chances of the relay quartet. At the semifinal stage, a little bit of hard work and concentration could ship the team to a dream final against the ‘best of the best’ relay teams, notably USA, Jamaica, Netherlands, Nigeria, Italy and a few that may be out to cause upsets.
It is a decent challenge they must embrace.
That, in no doubt should spur on other members of Team Ghana who are now considered as dark horses to make that expected impact.
By Andrew Nortey
Sports
GFA issues statement on Black Star AFCON qualifying fiasco
The Ghana Football Association (GFA) wishes to express its sincerest apologies to the good people of Ghana for the Black Stars’ inability to qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) 2025.
We understand the disappointment and frustration this failure has caused, and we share in the pain and sadness of our beloved fans. We acknowledge that the team’s performance did not meet the high expectations of the nation, and for that, we are truly sorry.
We would like to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt gratitude to our loyal football fans for their unwavering support and encouragement throughout the qualifying campaign. Your passion and dedication are what drive us to strive for excellence.
Going forward, the Executive Council, at its meeting of Wednesday, 20th November, 2024, took the following key decisions:
- Immediate dissolution of the Management Committee of the senior national football team, the Black Stars. In doing so, we sincerely thank the members of the Committee for their service to Ghana Football over the years.
- The Executive Council will meet the Head Coach of the Black Stars, Mr. Otto Addo, on the 27th of November, 2024, to discuss his Technical report on the just ended AFCON qualifiers and the overall performance of the Technical team since assuming duty earlier this year.
Ghana Football Retreat
Given the passion and concern shown by members and stakeholders of Ghana Football as well as the general public, the GFA shall hold a Ghana Football Retreat to which members and all stakeholders shall be invited.
Members and stakeholders such as SWAG and the Media, National Sports Authority, PFAG, former captains and players, coaches, supporters, Football enthusiasts, Sports-related professionals (Medics, Economists, Marketers etc), and Opinion leaders (including traditional rulers) will be invited to the Retreat.
The Ministries of Sports, Finance and Education, and key Authorities such as Ghana Revenue Authority and Ghana Tourism Authority will be represented.
The meeting shall be held on the 28th of November, 2024, at the Ghanaman Soccer Center of Excellence, with the primary purpose of soliciting views and perspectives from stakeholders of Ghana Football. The output from this Retreat shall be used to develop a roadmap for enhancing the performance of the Black Stars and our other national teams.
We appreciate the support and patience of the Ghanaian people and look forward to making amends in the future.
…… END ……
Sports
Give local players the chance now
Withdrawals from national teams assignment has cast a slur on this week’s selections released by Football Associations globally.
England’s Three Lions had about six players withdrawing to take care of minor injuries suffered from the intense matches of the English Premier League (EPL), European Champions League competition and other club commitments.
Others like Belgium and Switzerland have suffered similar fate as countries prepare to honour international matches.
And Ghana’s Black Stars have not been spared in the season of withdrawals.
The Ghana Football Association (GFA) on Monday reported that many as eight players had withdrawn from the squad announced by Coach Otto Addo for a double-header against Angola and Niger.
Ahead of their first training session for the Angola and Niger games, Antoine Semenyo, Inaki Williams, Jonas Adjetey, Tariq Lamptey, Jerome Opoku, Alexander Djiku, Ibrahim Osman and Joseph Painstil all gave reasons to be excused from duty.
Inaki Williams picked up a hamstring injury on November 7 and has since not been able to train; Tariq Lamptey had a calf discomfort that got aggravated last week, and currently undergoing rehabilitation with his club; Jonas Adjetey is on his way to full recovery but had a setback in their last League game, while Jerome Opoku suffered a chronic back pain which got worse during a Super Lig game against Besiktas on Sunday.
Antoine Semenyo is nursing an injury of the patella tendon due to overload of games, Alexander Djiku suffered an aggravation of an existing hamstring that got him substituted in their last game on Sunday; Ibrahim Osman picked up a hamstring injury in his last outing for his club which got him substituted at half time with Joseph Painstil’s reason personal.
The mass withdrawals only goes to confirm calls to take a second look as the congested football fixtures European clubs and players have complained bitterly about.
Ghana has since invited six players to replace the eight that withdrawn. My disappointment, however, lies in the fact that no local player was picked among the replacement to add to the three announced in the first call up.
Asante Kotoko’s Emmanuel Antwi, Razak Simpson of Nations FC and Samartex FC’s Isaac Afful were announced in the first 23-man squad announced by Otto Addo.
That sparked excitement among followers of the local game but expected the six replacement to have at least three more of the local based professionals.
That would have increased the local representation to six and would have been in contention in getting one or two starting roles.
Otto Addo deserves commendation for extending invitations to players from the Ghana league but the time to go a step further by giving them playing chances should be now.
With a thick cloud hanging around Ghana’s qualification and hopes at an all-time low, this should be the time to put some faith in players featuring in the GPL.
Ghana should be guided by the reasons that have called for the massive withdrawals in several national teams in order to avoid such shocks in future.
Morale is low in the team over the magnitude of a task for Sudan to lose all two games and for the Stars to win all with their current form.
But those two matches remain high-profile enough for the local based players to use to justify their inclusion for places in the national team
By Andrew Nortey
