Afranie should watch his mouth - Ebo Quansah

There are rotten eggs on the faces of members of the Ghana Football Association these days. It was not long ago that the football association paraded Milan Zivadinovic as the man to drag Ghana football from the bottom pit it has fallen. To make his stay more comfortable, the FA went out of their way, to look for top of the range accommodation for him.

A donor, apparently, with a lot of FA prompting donated a house at Adwoa Wangara, complete with a swimming pool, to make the coach?s stay comfortable and enable him give off his best to the cause of Ghana football. Milan had been contracted on $10,000 and $15,000 signing on fee to do a job for the country. But the man had other ideas.

Right from the day he appended his signature on the contract, he started giving the authorities headache. He had to leave for his native Yugoslavia to attend to personal matters. No sooner had he returned than he was on the plane again, this time with the excuse that he was going to Greece and Turkey to monitor the performances of the Ghanaian foreign legion in and around those countries. At one point in time, he was left stranded in Turkey, where he had gone ahead of the team, which was billed to play a friendly match. The Black Stars could not make the trip apparently because someone in Accra had not succeeded in making the necessary arrangements.

The long and short of it was that the national team assembled in Kampala for the first match in the 2004 African Cup of Nations qualifier against the Cranes of Uganda without playing any warm-up match. The consequences of not preparing effectively were a 0-1 loss to Uganda, who had never previously beaten Ghana.

From there, the wheels of whatever engine the coach had assembled began coming off. He openly accused his employers of frustrating him in his job. He also tore at his players, accusing them of not trying. He went on to say, initially, that the players he assembled were not fit to wear the national jersey. When this assertion could no more hold, he modified the statement to read that 30 percent of his players were not good enough. Instead of staying to put right what went wrong in Uganda, Zivadinovic abandoned his brief and left for his native Yugoslavia on the excuse that his mother was ill. The FA objected to his travel. But he still managed to sneak out of the country.

From the comfort of his native land, Milan wired a letter terminating his appointment. Not many followers of the game were surprised at a move, which looked the logical conclusion to a saga that needed not to have been allowed to play out in the first place. Milan arrived in Ghana with an unenviable record of walking out on his contract on a number of occasions. Why he was given the job is what has baffled quite a number of followers of the game in this country.

Explaining the circumstances, Kofi Nsiah, FA General Secretary told this writer that three people were short-listed for the appointment. One was demanding a king?s ransom. The other, Ian Potterfield landed in Asante Kotoko before arrangements were finalized leaving Milan Zivadinovic without a challenger. That is how the job of managing the technical build-up of the Black Stars was handed over to the Yugoslav.

According to the FA scribe, the coach managed to explain away his inability to complete his assignment elsewhere. They were convinced he would do a good job, hence the decision to hand over the job to him. Now, Milan is no more. It is now up to the FA to recoup its signing on fees. As for the three months wages that have already been paid, there is no way that the money could be recouped. One only hopes this becomes a major lesson in this nation?s efforts at rediscovering our effective role as leaders in the Africa game.

That means we should get on with the job of preparing the Black Stars for the next assignment ? a crucial qualifier with the Rwandan national team at the Accra Sports Stadium on Sunday, October 13. At this point in time, the football association ought to kick the idea of a foreign coach to touch while the whole policy undergoes re-examination.

In the meantime, the football controlling body has appointed Emmanuel Kwasi Afranie to take charge of the Black Stars build-up to the match with Rwanda. Not a bad idea given the fact that Afranie is an employee of the National Sports Council with a national pedigree. But I do not like the way Afranie has suddenly emerged from the shadows of a very serious scandal in the build-up to the Under 20 World Cup in Argentina to make so many demands even before he assembles his team.

If I were Afranie, I would keep quiet and let my performance on October 13, speak for itself. Some of us have not forgotten the events just before the championship in Argentina and if he does not know, Afranie should take it from me that the only reason he was allowed to go to South America was that the authorities felt changing him at that last minute would disorganize the team.

As a coach Afranie has results speaking for him. But his tendency to wage into matters completely outside his official brief is what is undermining his ability to reach the very top. That is why he should mend his ways. As it is the FA has made it abundantly clear that Coach E.K. Afranie will be in charge of the team for the game against Rwanda. He has not been appointed the full time coach yet. If he is given the nod, some of us will fight for him to be given all the trappings of his office. At the moment, we are monitoring both his performance and behaviour closely.

As an employee of the Sports Council, Coach E.K. Afranie could be called upon at any time to assist with team handling. It does not mean that for every assignment he is given, the FA should sign a contract with him. I will like to believe he could be given some allowances to augment whatever he is receiving. If and when he is appointed the national coach with permanent brief, that will call for a designation of his status.

At this point in time, it is not necessary for the FA to contract a foreign coach given recent events. We have come a long way in our football evolution to be able to entrust the national team in the hands of indigenous handlers. Unfortunately, our local coaches appear to have a problem or two, not necessarily, with the job on the field. Everybody appreciates that the low emolument offered on the Ghanaian job market does not inspire the average worker. In the difficult job of coaching where results are of essence, it is necessary to reward achievement. And I believe the football association recognizes that and will work out some mechanism for the stand-in coach to be rewarded. But I do not like Afranie?s tendency to rush to the media to ask for the moon. One will like to believe the football association will read him the riots act if he continues to work through the media instead of on the field. October 13 is barely two weeks from now. That is why I expect the coach to start working seriously on his team.

The permutation for the Cup of Nations preliminaries, featuring only three teams in one group means that we cannot afford to joke with the second match after losing the first engagement with Uganda. We should prepare well to account for Rwanda. If we get a good win, it will inspire the Black Stars to erase the memory of that 0-1 loss in Kampala and propel the team to be with the elite of the African game in Tunisia 2004. Lest I forget, the football association has some explanation to do to the teeming Ghanaians soccer fans. In the run-up to Mali 2002, the Ghana Football Association held a press conference and outlined a new policy. That policy is that the nation would use the Mali 2002 squad as nucleus of the national team. The rationale is that the youthful squad would be peaking when the nation get ready to contest for a place in the 2006 World Cup in Germany. In spite of some people who would want us to believe that qualifying for the quarterfinal re-presented a failure, there are many in the football fraternity who see a lot a lot of wisdom in the policy. That is why I am disappointed that the FA did not insist on this policy in their dealing with Milan Zivadinovic. Milan appears to have started all over again calling every Ghanaian footballer on the planet to camp. The result was that when the Black Stars arrived in Kampala, the coach did not know his first team choice. We have experimented enough. It is now time for action.

Let the FA and the stand-in coach go back to the Mali 2002 squad, infuse it with two or three players from the foreign legion and we will be in business.