PERHAPS the greatest Ghanaian that we will never see playing for his country in the World Cup is Freddy Adu. Sixteen years old and living in the United States, the young sensation has resisted all recent approaches from Ratomir Dujkovic, the Ghana coach, to sign up for this summer’s World Cup, or even the African Cup of Nations, which starts today. He is a Yank at heart now and that is how he will remain.
But Adu’s is merely the latest chapter in the Ghanaian tale of lost talent. He went West because the opportunities for a young player were so much greater there. Before him, though, fine players such as Abédi Pelé, three times African Footballer of the Year, and Tony Yeboah, the striker who scored thunderous goals for Leeds United, did in the end give their all for the national cause, but the set-up around them was so shambolic that the Black Stars never reached their potential. Another very African story.
We find Yeboah today in an hotel in Accra. This is his hotel, the delightfully named Yegoala, which used to be his family home but which he has transformed into one of the best hotels in the capital. During the daytime, he is known to do the school run and man the office; at nights, to spin the music in the hotel’s nightclub, a place that fills out largely because the cult of his personality is still so strong.
Leeds fans who have made the pilgrimage to the Yegoala to find him will have located a relaxed, charming and phenomenally popular man. Everything about him and his following suggests that he could contribute considerably as a retired footballer, yet the Ghana Football Association (GFA) has never picked up the phone.
“No one’s rung, not even for advice,” he said. “You have to understand that football in Ghana is not like in Europe, the people who run the game here are in it for the politics. It is not democratic. Some of them are lawyers, some are doctors, none are football people.
“If they ever want my help, I’d be there for them, but we have a lot of very good former players who are all sitting at home and doing nothing.”
The one significant exception here is Abédi Pelé, who retired but determined to keep playing the game: Fifa “goodwill soccer ambassador” for Africa, four years as vice-chairman of the GFA, he even started his own football academy, FC Nania. It is starting to bear fruit and now has three of its graduates playing in France.
Only last week, Pelé was in Glasgow meeting representatives of Rangers, who have expressed an interest in forming a link with FC Nania and who will be sending scouts to Ghana to see the academy in February. “The intention is for us to have a united front, a joint venture,” Pelé said. “Any time they see any player from our team who is great, he will pass through Rangers’ academy. This is very exciting for us.”
But this is a rare chink of light for him in the football business in Ghana. His position of power in the GFA only reaffirmed how backwards it was. “We could not even organise our own league. Sometimes the league would be postponed for a long time. Sometimes we’d look for players for the national team and weren’t able to bring them back home to play.
“The real problem for me was that the FA was never independent. The minute you have economic power, you can be fully independent, you can decide your own future. But the FA has never been independent. If the government gives you your money, your manpower, everything, then they have control.”
The frustrations of old remain fresh with Yeboah. “When I was playing they might offer you a win bonus and then not pay it,” he said. “And selection could be strange, with government ministers giving their own team selection to the coaches. That’s what it was like for me — before the game, you could have four or five different teams being announced, you didn’t know who was in charge of selection. It is every Ghanaian footballer’s dream to go to the World Cup, but we never qualified before and all because of mismanagement.”
This is another reason why Yeboah has chosen to stay away from the game. “All my life in football, I had somebody in charge of me, so I wanted to sit in an office and give instructions myself,” he said. “But foremost, I wanted to do something useful with my life. I was thinking about the future of the Ghanaian people — people who have no work, people who supported me throughout my football career. So I wanted to do something to employ the people and in Accra I now have some 50 employees.”
But if qualification for this year’s World Cup was achieved despite the system, the realisation of a place in Germany has the potential to transform the future. The minimum prizemoney for World Cup finalists — even if they go home after the first round — is SwFr7 million (about £3.2 million).
“That kind of sum is unthinkable to our FA,” Pelé said. “With that, you can create so much. The FA can finally afford to run itself independently. It can then create a whole lot of academies. There will be new avenues for football to be played, it will mean that our footballers can go to school. It gives us opportunities that we have never dreamt of.”
So while a place in the World Cup may seem like the end of the rainbow, it could feel more like a start if managed correctly. “Even now there is a lot of excitement in the country,” Pelé said, “a kind of World Cup fever, Germany fever. The competition will bring a lot of awareness to Ghana and when it is over, the economic benefit will kick in. That is what the World Cup means to us.”
- Additional reporting by Dan Brennan, of Liberos.com
