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Ghana ready to fulfil its destiny and put rest of Africa to shame

Jonathan Wilson

— PHOTO: AP

WORKING WONDERS: Ghanaian coach Milovan Rajevac has used the strength of the emerging youngsters to crush dissident factions and egos that have been the bane of other African teams at this World Cup.

Brentford was the turning point. Looking back, I remember it for the inept stewarding that led to me ripping my jacket as I jumped a turnstile to get in; for Nigeria's coach, Augustine Eguavoen, having taken 20 minutes of stick from his nation's press, leading them in a chorus of Happy Birthday for Claude LeRoy, the Ghana coach; and most especially for Ernest, the magnificently eloquent and opinionated voice of Joy FM.

“We are back,” Ernest roared, as Ghana ended 15 years without a win against their great rivals with a 4-1 trouncing. “This is the night when Ghana becomes again the kings of west Africa. Now we will go forward, we will win the CAN in our own country and then let the world tremble before us.”

The 2006 World Cup — Ghana's first — was one thing, he said, but Angola and Togo had qualified for that; this was something more concrete. Since then, they have gone on to semifinal and final defeats at the last two Africa Cups of Nations, won the Under-20 World Cup and, if they beat Uruguay, will become the first African side to reach a World Cup semifinal.

I bumped into Ernest again this week. He was, as ever, wearing a bright T-shirt under a dark suit jacket — the cold, evidently, like everything else, folds before his articulacy — dispensing opinions on anything and everything.

“What is happening here,” he said, “is what should have happened in the 50s and 60s. But FIFA wouldn't let us in.”

That is a slightly biased reading of history, but only slightly. Milovan Rajevac, Ernest says, has used the strength of the emerging youngsters to crush the dissident factions and egos that have ruined other African teams at the tournament.

Certainly Ghana was the first black African footballing superpower and it has a deep and understandable pride in its history. Travelling back with Ian Hawkey, the great British historian of African football, from Kumasi to Accra during the Cup of Nations in 2008, we passed through the suburb of Legon, where the University of Ghana is based.

Reminiscences

Kwame Nkrumah, who became prime minister in 1957 and then Ghana's first president after independence in 1960, soon recognised the value of sport as a tool to pull the country together, and give people an identity beyond their tribal and regional affiliations.

“Nkrumah would call the players to the seat of government before a major tournament and his message was about projecting values, humanity, and always that ‘You can do it',” said Dr Narteh.

“A lot of African countries were then still under colonial rule. He wanted to project the idea of black power, that ‘What they can do, we as blacks can also do'.” Nkrumah appears in many of the photographs, smiling with the squad.

The political significance of the team is evident in their shirts. The black star — recalling the transatlantic shipping line established by Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican father of pan-Africanism, symbolically to undo the wrongs of slavery — remains the icon of the Ghana team, but in the 50s and 60s, it was huge, taking over the front of Ghana's white shirts.

“The Jewish nation has its Star of David, Islamic nations have the Crescent,” Dr. Narteh said. “In the Pan-Africanist struggle we have the Black Star. We believed in the star of Africa, part of the African family worldwide and we should not forget it.”

Great record

By 1963, when Ghana hosted the Cup of Nations, Gyamfi, who had become a national hero as a striker in the 7-0 demolition of Nigeria in 1955, had become coach, preaching the virtues of “scientific football”.

They beat Sudan 3-0 in the final and, two years later, successfully defended their crown, beating Tunisia 3-2 in the final in Tunis.

Gyamfi would return to lead Ghana to glory again in 1982, setting a record of three wins as coach equalled only by Egypt's Hassan Shehata this year.

Narteh remains nostalgic about the side of the 60s, his voice cracking as he recalls the ball-playing defender Edward “The Professor” Aggrey Finn who put Ghana ahead with a penalty in that 1963 final, Wilberforce “Netbreaker” Mfum, who sealed the win with two further goals, his strike partner Edward “Sputnik Shot” Acquah, and the midfield schemer Ofei “Little Bird” Dodoo, scorer of Ghana's first and third goals in the 1965 final.

Ghana reached the final again at the next tournament, in 1968, Mfum scoring two and the fabled midfield pairing of Ibrahim Sunday and Osei Kofi getting one apiece, in an epic 4-3 semifinal victory over Ivory Coast, but they were denied a hat-trick of titles by Congo-Kinshasa in the final.

As Mobutu Sese Seko, Congo's dictator, also realised the power of sport — culminating in the extraordinary coup of staging the Ali-Foreman fight in 1974 — Ghana found its superiority under threat.

They reached the final again in 1970, losing to Sudan, while Asante Kotoko, who briefly boasted Carlos Alberto Parreira as their manager, fought out an epic rivalry with Congo's Tout-Puissant Engelbert (a team actually politically opposed to Mobutu) in African club competition in the late 60s, finally winning the African Champions Cup in 1970.

Waning fortunes

But Ghanaian football was waning. In April 1971 a defeat by Togo meant they failed to qualify for the Cup of Nations for the first time, and six months later their supremacy symbolically died with the murder of the great goalkeeper Robert Mensah.

For Narteh, one great regret remains: it's impossible to say how Ghana might have fared in the 1966 World Cup, but they were denied the chance when the African confederation (CAF) boycotted the tournament in protest at FIFA's decision to allocate only one place to African sides.

It is that absence for which, Ernest insists, the modern Ghana is desperately making up. “Now we are here,” he said, “fulfilling our destiny and putting the rest of Africa to shame.” — © Guardian News and Media 2010

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