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Hughton’s clock ticking (Part 1)
Chris Hughton
It is becoming increasingly difficult to be involved in conversations over the performance of Ghana’s Black Stars without playing the blame game.
In fact, being and remaining a fan of the national senior team has become a Herculean task which weight is beginning to weigh on the shoulders of fans.
Those that can no longer bear the pain and constant disappointment have called it quit, preferring to stay in neutral corners and ask of results of their matches.
A lot of fans have taken that difficult decision to stop supporting the Black Stars for many reasons – bordering on player selection, the team’s administrators, the technical team, avoiding heartbreaks and many other reasons.
It is a painful decision because it feels like whatever grievances they express just hang around the neck; it gets nowhere near the corridors of power as far as the game’s administration was concerned, let alone to be considered.
The aches and suffering notwithstanding, there remain a few faithful to the Black Stars course.
Theirs have been that one day the expected changes they crave for or wish to see would happen. For this group of people, their consolation appears to be a frequent diagnosis of the Black Stars ‘ailment’ match after match and suggest ways of addressing them.
A senior colleague at work,
Alhaji Salifu Abdul-Rahaman, is one of such loyal fans of the Black Stars I know. He’ll wear his Black Stars replica jersey on any day or time to show his support for the team while we wonder what keeps him going.
If the team plays on a Saturday, one can bet to see him in his replica jersey the following day to work. We refer to the Black Stars as ‘Alhaji’s team.’
What is left for such loyal fans is the recurrent post-match analysis that ends up in blame games, that is, identifying problems that contributed to the team’s woeful display and blame players and coaches for that.
He shared with me an interesting observation on one of the social media platforms where a fan expressed indignation at Baba Rahman for being at fault for the first of the four goals the USA scored against Ghana in the latest international friendly match played in the wee hours of Wednesday.
Amusingly, Baba Rahman was nowhere near the team that suffered the back-to-back defeats of the Black Stars by the USA and Mexico, two games Ghana registered just a single shot on target.
Obviously, this may be a fan that had missed the lineup but assumed most of the blunders at the back of the team could be associated with the defender.
He is not the only player or victim to have suffered from such imaginative assessment. Andre Ayew has been one and even his brother Jordan.
When they are featured and results do not go in the team’s favour, then they become the scapegoats.
When the team performs, then fans understand the need to have experience players in the team.
The coaches are also not spared or isolated from the blame for the choices of players selected for particular games like it happened after the USA match when a fan described the players as mediocre.
This has been the trend for some time now anytime the Black Stars are involved in a game; and it does not look like ending now, at least until the GFA and the Black Stars get their acts right.
By Andrew Nortey