GRi Sports 14 - 02 - 2003

 

 

GFA fails to approve coach

 

Accra (Greater Accra) 14 February 2003 - “The nation has not been doing well at all in football, the one game that excites great passion among us all,” the President observed on Thursday, making it clear that the Minister for Youth and Sports is certainly a prime candidate for the chop.

 

“When the Black Stars perform well, the national mood is always lightened. But when they perform badly, we all get depressed.”    

 

But, it seems the people entrusted to ensure that the Black Stars perform well are not even able to select a coach for the national side. The search for a substantive coach to salvage Ghana football from total collapse is not yet over as the football ruling house, Ghana Football Association (GFA) failed to endorse a coach for the Black Stars.

 

The GFA, The Statesman can reveal, has rejected all the three coaches that applied for the job. The coaches, E.K. Afranie, acting Black Stars gaffer, Burkhard Ziese and Manuel Gomes had earlier in the week appeared before a GFA select committee for interviews.

 

But when the executive committee of GFA met to deliberate on the outcome of the interview and possibly select a candidate for the Sports Minister’s approval, the three coaches were rejected under questionable circumstances.

 

The Statesman investigations revealed that prior to the interview, the GFA set out a benchmark of which a prospective coach must meet, pegging the pass mark at 60 per cent. However, when the interviews were conducted, the German tactitian, Ziese, was said to have come up tops.

 

Ziese, who appeared before the interview panel on Monday, was said to have garnered 61 per cent defeating the two other contestants. But rather than give the job to the German to prepare the Black Stars for its first major assignment in June, the GFA says it is calling for mare applicants. This move is expected to undermine the preparations of the Stars for the Nations Cup qualifiers.

 

GFA sources told The Statesman that the football governing body’s decision not to give the job to the German may have been influenced by L-Sporto, the sponsors of the FA with a view to field another candidate of their preference.

 

L-Sporto, the paper learnt, sponsored Manuel Gomes, the Portuguese coach who failed to impress the panel. Gomes, who spoke through an interpreter when he met the panel on Tuesday, had stated among other things, in his Curriculum Vitae that he spoke fluent English and French, in addition to his native Portuguese.

 

But, the panel found out to their disgust that he could not even communicate in basic English. This apparent deception, it was learnt, infuriated some of the GFA members on the panel.

 

The fourth person shortlisted from the initial 14 applicants, Abdul Razak, had opted out of the race, apparently citing the FA’s reluctance to engage a local coach. But now, the FA says Emmanuel Kwasi Afranie, the caretaker coach, is not qualified to coach the stars. The coach is on his way to Benin Republic, leading the Stars to face the Beninoise national team in an international friendly.

GRi…/

 

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