Sorry state of the nation's favourite game
If it does not add up, you must subtract. Yet, the Ghana Football Association (GFA) claims the state of the nation's favourite game is healthy, at the terminal stage of imminent death.
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From club level to the national level, Ghana has come up short, a state that cannot be sustained for any meaningful development and progress, much less excellence.
Over the past one year, the Black Stars have lost ground, starting with the loss of the AFCON grande finale to the Elephants of neighbouring Cote d'Ivoire, and dropping from 25th to 41st in FIFA rankings, currently behind Cape Verde, Cote d’Ivoire and Algeria.
More culpable than capable, their managers -- the GFA -- are in the throes of woe over their bad stewardship.
Administratively, the FA is technologically-challenged, demonstrating its amateurism with stale information on its website, recently condemned to reconstruction.
Bearing distaste for transparency, members of FA resort to secrecy where books ought to be open to scrutiny, even defying an order by the Bureau of National Investigations for their submission of relevant documentation(s) covering revenue accrued since 2006.
Structurally, they fund neither new projects nor renovate existing structures. Under the influence of greed, there exists no evidence that funds advanced the FA by FIFA, last year, for infrastructural purposes, were used for that purpose, drawing criticism from the British High Commissioner, Jon Benjamin.
In response, the classless FA went rustic, resorting to insults of the High Commissioner, in the process even slighting Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II the head of the British government and the Commonwealth of Nations.
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However, the FA has since smoked the peace pipe with the High Commissioner, a truce aimed at creating conducive conditions for the country facing general elections later this year.
Still, it does not take away the dubious nature of the association.
They do not invest infrastructural proceeds from FIFA into the existing structures, and playing fields are substandard at most venues, majority of which have no floodlights.
At the Accra Sports Stadium, the floodlights have blacked out, while the scoreboard does not light up. Worse still, the environment is unwelcoming. The washrooms ooze filth, turning off fans, driving them away from the stands, to the clean environs of sports bars around the country, where they are served better products and services.
Thanks to their amateurism and ignoble image, the FA has missed out on the league-sponsorship of the erstwhile First Capital Plus Bank, now operating under a new incarnation as the Capital Bank.
Also, due to the loss of revenue, first-tier clubs are less endowed in cash-on-hand, never mind reserves, prompting at least one of them to forewarn of its potential withdrawal from the league, an eventuality that could throw the league off-balance.
While the FA top brass are living comfortably, most players are paid next to nothing, some owed salaries dating back to last season.
Competitively, the first-tier league is weak, hardly producing outfield players for the Black Stars, their only local defender, goalie Fatau Dauda, an apology of a national star evidenced by his woeful performance last weekend in AshGold's exit from the CAF Champions League.
Again, the playing fields are substandard and play is pedestrian, borne out by AshGold's elimination from continental contest, bowing out on a 2-3 aggregate, at the hands of Algerian opponents, M.O. Bejaia.
The nation's other continental representatives, Medeama SC, who won the MTN FA Cup last season and this season's inaugural Super Cup, have faltered in their first two league matches, scoring only one, while conceding four, a stat as inspiring as doomsday.
It may not be doomsday yet, for Ghana football. Still, in the days of public apathy, players' payday-mayday, clubs' diminishing returns, FA's malpractice and their media-infiltration, doomsday is in the neighbourhood, and it is too close for comfort.
In spite of the evidence, the FA claims its brand is good. Yet, it does not add up. It has run the nation's favourite game into the underground. Is worse in store? No doubt, unfortunately.
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