One of the many curiosities of this African Cup of Nations has been the
approach of Benin to team recruitment. Seven weeks from kick-off they
launched an internet appeal for new talented Beninois players to step
forward, receiving 30 applicants. They rejected the lot and elected to come
here with a new coach instead.
Conversely, when it comes to Ghana, they know what they want and who they want
to deliver it. Yesterday, it seemed as though the entire city of Accra had
dressed up, the vehicles, the streets and everyone in them bathed in the
red, yellow and green of the national flag for the occasion: the
tournament’s opening match, pride brimming over at the national stadium,
Ghana 2 Guinea 1.
If you were to believe the publicity, it is Michael Essien versus the rest of
the world. Essien did indeed impose himself on this tricky opener, which
Ghana struggled to close out, though he will have left his supporters simply
wanting more.
Massive sporting occasions such as this tend to have a figure whose face
becomes integral, their personal drama a central storyline. It starts in the
media, spreads to the advertising hoardings (Essien is doing yoghurt, beer
and telecommunications brands here) and eventually they become the name and
question on every yearning fan’s lips. Can our man really do it?
Essien became the sole contender at this tournament when Stephen Appiah, the
captain, withdrew because of injury. Appiah is the more attacking player,
the brains trust of the midfield, and he also bears the genuine personality
of team leader. That is some hole to fill and Essien’s homeland knows it.
Not even the Ghana coach is prepared to suggest otherwise. When a key figure
such as Appiah becomes unavailable to a team, a standard response from a
coach is that the squad is capable and good enough not to miss him. Not
Claude Le Roy. “Michael is a great player,” he said. “But he’s not Stephen.
Stephen is older, he is the real skipper and everybody was looking to him.
That is what we are missing so much.”
His opinion of Essien is not bad, either, describing him as “from another
planet” and “without a doubt the best central defender in the world” — which
is interesting since he played him in midfield. But he is not Appiah. Appiah
is not on the squad list, but he has been with the squad nevertheless.
Essien? Well, it just remains for him to do it on the pitch. Again and again.
Pressure? You would not know it, not yesterday, and certainly not if you
fought through the dusty traffic to the Accra suburb of Dansomer. This is
where Liberty Professionals, Essien’s former team, play and it is also where
he built a house for his mother, Aba Gyanode. An hour away, the airport
district is where you will find the big stars, the Tony Yeboahs and the
Sammy Kuffours, their residences large, elaborate and questionable of taste.
But Aba is delighted with her palace — large, comparatively simple in
stone-washed pink, in an area that does not suggest the Essiens have moved
beyond their roots. Like in the rest of the city, large Ghana flags are
draped from the walls and from the gate. Aba is also wearing a smaller
version as a headscarf. “I am so proud of him,” she said. “I knew that he
was a good player, but I never thought that he would get this far.” She
carries in her handbag a small, private collection of dog-eared photographs:
Michael standing proud next to his elder cousin, Michael, in an early
football team, Michael aged 5 by a dirt road.
In those days they lived 20 miles out of the city and mostly in the absence of
Essien’s father. He, too, was a footballer, but the parents split and Aba
kept the family by baking and selling bread. “It was difficult,” she said,
but they were not poor by African standards and even then Michael
contributed by playing decent football.
In Ghana, bystanders watching amateur or junior football will hand their spare
change sometimes to the players whose football they enjoyed, as if giving
them a tip. “When Michael was young, they always gave him money,” Aba said.
“It wasn’t much, but he always brought it home to me, he never spent it on
sweets.”
She does indeed have a special relationship with him and it has survived the
years and distance apart. “I was always very close to him,” she said. “I had
four daughters, but he was my last child and my only boy. I soon came to
realise there were two sides to him. He was a very quiet boy, but on the
football pitch he was different, a rough boy. I came to realise that you had
to be like that. He was good at volleyball and table tennis, too, but
football was what he really wanted.”
It did the trick. When Essien was 15, “Sir” Cecil Jones Attuquayefio spotted
him in a tournament and realised that he had found a gem. Attuquayefio has
never been knighted but is generally referred to as Sir out of respect for
his achievements: a Nations Cup winner in 1965, twice more a finalist and,
as a coach, once voted Africa’s best.
When he saw Essien, he was preparing the Ghana team for the 1999 under-17
World Cup in New Zealand and recruited him immediately. “He was one of the
best players I ever had,” Attuquayefio said. “That under-17 team had a lot
of trial matches before New Zealand. Michael played in them all, he was
never sick, never injured, and his performance was always outstanding.
“He played centre back for me at the beginning. He was a good tackler and the
best in the air in the team, but I wondered if he could move forward to
midfield and talked to him about it. He was a young boy and could have
rejected the idea. But in one match during that World Cup, one of my other
players, a midfielder, was shown a red card, so I pushed Michael forward. He
didn’t really have a choice. But he was really excellent and we kept him
there. The team finished third — and that was how Michael became a
midfielder.”
Attuquayefio also noted back then Essien’s innate shyness. “He was a players’
man,” he said. “Yes, he was quiet, but he was jovial in the company of his
colleagues.”
Would he enjoy being thrust into the limelight? All the indicators say no. His
mother is so keen not to heap pressure on him that she decided to watch
yesterday’s opening match at home on television. Even if Ghana reach the
final, she said, she will stay at home as if it were just another match. As
for the anointed hero, his reluctance is such that he would rather his life
were about playing football and not playing the role of figurehead. Some
here wonder why he cannot be more personable and public, as Appiah is.
Others ask when his wealth is going to be seen or felt by a country that
needs it badly.
Essien’s answer, a couple of days before the tournament started, was that he
did not feel the pressure, although he added, fascinatingly, that the
national stage was a more natural place to shed the cloak of introversion
that is being demanded of him.
“The atmosphere is very different with the national team,” he said. “It’s a
lot of fun, we have a lot of jokes together and do things we don’t in our
clubs. The feeling is not the same. Here, we sing together and do a lot of
things together.”
It will indeed be fascinating to watch as Essien explores the possibilities
suddenly available. Yesterday was no bad start, but what all Ghanaians
really require is that he wins them the African Cup of Nations; he would be
quite some national figure thereafter. Indeed, in front of her television at
home, even his mother may be moved to stand and applaud.
