Love Island S5 was actually better than S6, S7 and S8. Leo fucked the shit outta Jhonnie in casa, brung her back and then Kassy fell in love with her and started kissing her 😭 The new viewers would have hated Leo, Keenan, Kay Kay and Marco. #LoveIslandUSA
I’m ready to talk now.
Yesterday’s game was abysmal.
And while I’ll always support the Black Stars through the highs and the lows, it doesn’t mean I have to pretend when something is wrong.
Look, I appreciate that football is 90 minutes of running up and down the pitch, and that’s no joke. It’s physically demanding, mentally exhausting, and played under immense pressure.
So I’ll never downplay the effort of any individual player because I know none of us sitting behind our TVs could simply walk onto that pitch and do the same.
But that doesn’t take away from the fact that yesterday was poor.
We played England, a team everyone expected would give us a difficult time, and we held our own. Then we came up against Colombia, created opportunities, and somehow looked like a team that didn’t know what it wanted to do with the ball.
You can always tell when a team isn’t cohesive, and yesterday, we could all tell.
One thing that has constantly held us back is our obsession with finding the star instead of remembering there are 11 players on that pitch, and every single one of them matters. Football has never been about one person carrying a team. It’s about 11 people trusting each other enough to play as one.
And that’s where my bigger concern lies.
I’ve watched Ghana football long enough to know that our problems don’t begin and end on the pitch. Too many people have a say in decisions they probably shouldn’t be making. Sometimes I even wonder whether the coach has as much control as we think he does.
This isn’t new. It’s a problem that has followed Ghana football since the ’90s.
I genuinely believe this team has the talent to become something special. But they need to be allowed to grow together. They need stability. They need the freedom to build chemistry without constant outside interference.
When you think about the era of Stephen Appiah, Michael Essien, Sulley Muntari and Asamoah Gyan, it wasn’t just about talent. There was something bigger. They understood each other. They trusted each other. They played for each other.
Until we get back to that, we’ll keep having this same conversation every few years.