Ghanaian Heads Of State Who Gave A Personal Touch To National Football

Many are greatly surprised Ghana is unable to win Football’s African Cup of Nations since she last won it in 1982. As of the time of filing this story, it had been 42 long years since the trophy eluded Ghana. For this lapse, the entire global sports community turns attention to Ghana with an askance.

In 1992, 2010, and 2015, Ghana went to the grand finals of the competition losing narrowly on each occasion.  Twice to La Cote D’Ivoire, the in-betweener to Egypt. That was how close Ghana came to breaking that jinx, but an extensive period of that quest had been a comedy of abysmal performances, off-pitch, and boardroom wranglings ending in disappointing failures.

Ghana will be on parade in La Cote D’Ivoire 2024, and the question on the lips of the fans is, will it be the same old story? Will they not come out of the competition empty-handed?

There are some useful lessons Ghana could draw from the years she won the trophy and became its 4-time unprecedented title holder. Whilst Ghana stagnated, Egypt and Cameroon eased past their record becoming 7 and 5 times winners.

Evidence abounds about the personal interest some Ghanaian Heads of State took in the nation’s sports, soccer especially. In 1960, Dr Kwame Nkrumah appointed Ohene Gyan the Director (Minister) of Sports with whom he closely mapped a strategy to use sports to promote the African continental unity agenda.

Out of this emerged the Real Republicans football club which was dissolved in 1966 after Nkrumah was overthrown. Before his ouster, the sports team Dr.Nkrumah and Ohene Gyan lay at the apex, and steered the affairs, had won the AFCON competition in 1963 and 1965 for Ghana.

Another Ghanaian Head of State, Gen.Ignatius Kutu Acheampong also oversaw an AFCON triumph in 1978 before that year’s palace coup that deposed him. Acheampong was himself the Commissioner (Minister) for Sports. He built the Kaneshie Sports Complex and established the Ghana Armed Forces football club, SS74.

Both SS74 and Real Republicans were formed to break the dominance of Kumasi Asante Kotoko, Accra Hearts of Oak, and Accra Great Olympics of Ghana football, overall increasing the tempo of the local competition out of which potentials emerged to national teams. Acheampong used to call for the pardoning of players suspended over disciplinary offenses. He surfaced midstream to demonstrate a personal interest. For example, when Hearts of Oak and Black Stars forward, Anas Seidu had an altercation with a referee in 1977, it was Gen. Acheampong who called the player out of suspension.

In 1982, the Black Stars of Ghana won the Africa Cup for the fourth time. This interfaced with the 3-week-old regime of Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings who had thrust to power on the last day of 1981, just under one month before the AFCON event hosted by Ghana. One is safe to conclude, that this continental conquest represented the cumulative roles of the Acheampong and Limann governments.

Sports was untouched despite the emergency conditions in Ghana following the 31 December 1981 coup. A psychological booster to the Black Stars team which in the awareness of supported national duty gave off their best. What Dr. Nkrumah and Gen.Acheampong did in football, Flt. Lt. Rawlings replicated in the arts in his first year as Head of State.

He called for the formation of Obra Drama Troupe to provide an alternative to Ghanaians who had no choice in the wake of Osofo Dadzie Drama Group’s monopoly. Out of their healthy competition in television drama, Ghanaians had so much to savor in entertainment in the 1980s decade.

Later, Rawlings’ personal interest in the arts found a similar expression in sports where he had motivational retreats with World Boxing Champion, Azumah Nelson for the entire period the boxer reigned.

In football, he was a close friend of some of the coaches and without alluding that was the exact reason for the highs recorded in sports, it was a strong symbolic tonic for football. The Black Starlets, Ghana’s Under 17 male national football team won their age versions in the world in 1991 and 1995.

At a private dinner before Coach Sam Arday left for Ecuador ’95, he broke his top secret to Rawlings, and this was about his intention to introduce the multi-system of soccer to confound Ghana’s opponents. And it did work as other coaches had no antidote for the unfamiliar tactics in which players interchanged positions and moved in unison to action spots.

Ghana won two of the three Club Continental conquests in Rawlings’s tenure. Kotoko 1983, Hearts 2000. In 1970 Kotoko won the first title in the time of Dr Kofi Abrefa Busia as Prime Minister of Ghana.

However, since FIFA (International Association of Football Federations) initiated new rules that mandated it to overrule political and governmental interferences in football, the influence of national governments has become limited in football administration.

For instance, a government cannot appoint Heads of Football Administration. The Associations have devised their own procedures by and large aligned with the broad directives of FIFA. Countries face penalties such as expulsion and suspension from tournaments where governments overstepped their boundaries.

The dictates of succeeding generations confined governments to the provision of infrastructure. They do pay winning bonuses but any poorly built team can be beneficiaries of bonuses for it is the call of those at the helm of affairs before a fall. In any case, all levels in the football structures have stuck out as well-intentioned. yet the period with very little government role has witnessed a clear nosedive in the sport as far as Ghana is concerned.

We are not talking about the number of times Ghana has participated in competitions or gone all the way to play in the grand finals. We are talking about trophy capture, and ruing the departure of the golden era of football.