Ashanti Gold’s dream of making it into the group stage of the CAF Champions League ended in the preliminary round as expected, yes as expected because like a typical Ghanaian club we gladly accept failure when ever we are paired against a North African club.
Ashanti Gold won the first leg by a lone goal, a result most Ghanaian consider a defeat in waiting with a return leg to the perceived no-go area, North Africa. North Africa clubs have been very dominant in CAF Inter-club competitions but that does not warrant the Maghreb phobia we have.
You can be pardoned when you fear the likes of Al Ahly, Zamalek, Esperance and other giants but not a normal club like MO Bejaia whose Africa record is nothing to write home about.
We often use the disparity of the two economies as an alibi for failure but clubs in other sub-Saharan African countries exploit in Africa makes this alibi a weak one.
Talking about economy, Clubs in Nigeria should be dominating the various CAF Inter-Club Competition since they have the biggest economy in the entire Continent.
It’s not about Money because the recent episode of the ‘Ghana Africa Failure’ featured a club owned by a big corporate giant, a gold mining company to be specific. If it’s about money tell me why clubs in Congo not the Democratic Republic do so well in Africa.
They own their own stadium, the players are well remunerated and have an experienced coach who has tasted Africa before.
The way they bowed out is a shame. They gifted the Algeria club a cheap goal when the supposed experience Fatau Dauda failed to grab a simple cross only for a professional defender to direct it into his own net under no pressure. They managed to equalise and went into recess with a 2-1 aggregate lead which meant they have only 45 minute to prevent the not soo good opponent from scoring two goals. They returned from recess and threw the game away with comical goal keeping from a whole senior national team goalie.
Qualification was beckoning Ashanti Gold but they turned a blind eye to it and chose to go back with the failure mindset that accompanied them to Algeria.
Others site the frequent player exodus as a reason for our failure. It’s a challenge but this challenge is easy to tackle. Clubs in Brazil lose players every transfer window but that doesn’t make them weak in their version of continental competitions. We proud ourselves as the Brazilians of Africa but refuse to do what the original Brazilians do. Ghana has an over flow of talent but we sit there unconcerned and rant about it without putting in structures to replace talent lost. The Ghana Football Association brought an Under-20 league so that all premiership clubs will have a feeder side but this initiative was a failure from birth. What we need to do it make it a must for every professional club have a well structured youth system. Football has moved pass the weekend assembling of players. It is an everyday thing. You need to have a proper youth side from U-14 to the U-20. In fact to be given a license to play in the premiership, cubs need to have an academy else we will sit there every year and cry about loss of talent. When you lose talent, replace them and the right way to replace them is having a talent factory in an academy.
For now all we and do is to press the Ghana button,’ Hope And Pray’.
Medeama need our prayers in Africa to save our already tarnished image in CAF Inter club competitions.
By Akromah Hawk Acquah
Follow on twitter @Sir_Hawk