God heard our prayer for the Black Stars but...

God is God. That is why Ghana has qualified to the second round of the ongoing 2010 FIFA World Cup competition in South Africa.

The Catalyst has not been too comfortable with Coach Milovan Rajevac’s conduct as far as his professional duty of ensuring Ghana performs creditably on the field of play is concerned.

The Stars held their own to a sweet 1 – 0 defeat to Germany in their last group match on Wednesday but enough to keep them in the competition. Interestingly, Australia whacked Serbia 2 - 1 to place Ghana in second place after Germany on goal aggregate with Serbia at bottom position after losing to Australia, which placed third having won their game 2 – 1 against Serbia.

Clearly, Coach Milo would have wished that Ghana and Serbia qualified from group D to the second round of the competition at the expense of Australia and Germany. But given the chance, the Ghana coach would have gladly sacrificed Ghana for Serbia to make it.

We prayed and prayed and prayed. God has heard our prayer and Ghana fortunately has made it, but unfortunately the only African country that has been able to make it to the next stage of the competition, with only the Ivory Coast left to play a difficult game today against North Korea in which they are expected to score ten goals in order to make it.

We hope that as Serbia, the point of concentration loss to Coach Milo, is finally out of the tournament, the Serbian coach would be able to deal quickly with the pain of his country’s exit and focus on doing just what Ghana, all these years, has paid him $45,000 a month to do at the expense of our local coaches. Some have sympathised with Coach Milo’s ‘predicament’ regarding his countenance in South Africa where Serbia was concerned, saying he found himself stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea.

But The Catalyst does not share this opinion. We think that he should have resigned when the groupings were done by FIFA and it came out that Ghana and Serbia were in the same group.

The fact of Ghana being in the same group D with Serbia did not come to Coach Milo as a surprise. He had several months to think it over and make a decision as to whether to stay and do a professional job for Ghana no matter which team is involved or to follow the path of patriotism for his country by honourably resigning. He chose to stay and so there can be no excuse whatsoever for his betrayal of the trust of the people of Ghana.

All said and done, Coach Milo must now focus and do what is technically right for Ghana to win the World Cup- the very first world cup to be won by an African country, in Africa, and for Africa- YES WE CAN!. That will mean a double history for Africa following the feat chalked by the Black Satellites at the under-20 world cup in Egypt.

Contrary to the scepticisms, we believe Ghana has what it takes to win the 2010 world cup for Africa, the first to be won by an African country at the event which is being hosted for the first time in Africa.

Coach Milo must understand he has a responsibility to make Africa shine at the ongoing tournament- Ghana being Africa’s only hope. Enough of the technical gaffes whether deliberate or genuine!

Let’s continue to pray for the Black Stars.