What Can We Reasonably Expect From The Black Stars At AFCON 2015?

The 2015 Cup of African Nations is now mere days away, with the Black Stars secluded in Seville, Spain; preparing to make their umpteenth onslaught on the rest of Africa for that ever elusive fifth continental title.

Kwesi Appiah had a mixed two years in charge of the side, the high being the impressive world cup qualifying campaign that saw the team making it to Brazil without barely breaking a sweat; culminating in the 6-1 demolition of everyone’s favourite Egypt in Kumasi.

The low was definitely the campaign in Brazil, Ghana marking her poorest performance on the world stage, a disunited team plagued by issues both on and off the field. Brazil 2014 concluded with every Ghanaian losing a bit of the little prestige we have managed to garner on the world stage due to the disgraceful conduct of the Stars, so Kwesi Appiah was let go.

In his place was appointed the Israeli Avram Grant, 59 year old former manager of Chelsea, Partizan Belgrade, Portsmouth, West Ham, and his home nation as well as both Maccabi clubs.

He’s quite a well travelled coach as his resume shows, and has had moderate success throughout his career. He was technical head at Chelsea for a while, before being handed the reins after the departure of the ever controversial Jose Mourinho in 2007. He led the Blues to the UEFA Champions League final, where they lost on penalties to Manchester United. He also led them to second place in both the league and the league cup, but the trophy hungry Roman Abramovich got rid of him at the end of the season.

That was the highest point of a career spanning decades, as it was during that year at Chelsea that he gained worldwide recognition. On the flip side, he led both Portsmouth and West Ham United to relegation from the English Premier League. There were mitigating factors, surely, but he was in charge during that time, thus bears if not full, at least most of the responsibility.

So that is a quick look at the man handling the side now, and that brings us to the meat of this piece. He’s only been head coach a little over a month, been in camping with the side for at least a fortnight now. As national teams go coaches always have little preparation time, but this is the first time he is handling this team, so it presents a little more challenges than usual.

This has raised a serious debate regarding the expectations one can place on this team. On the one hand are the hard liners; those who say this is the Black Stars, we have one of the strongest squads on the continent and thus when we enter a tournament we aim to win, regardless of the conditions surrounding the team.

On the other hand are those, including the GFA, who believe building a side for the future is more important than aiming for laurels in the short term. Thus we should place little pressure on the side, we allow them to grow organically, and then we can start putting massive expectations on them for subsequent tournaments.

For my side, I believe we have a strong enough squad to expect the minimum semi final berth. Despite the absence of some key squad members, and the taste of failure of the last two AFCONS, the depth in strength still remains, and what this side has needed more than anything the past three years is organisation.

I view Milovan Rajevac as Ghana’s best coach within the past twenty years, and it’s not because he had us playing any extraordinary level of football. What he did was instil a team and work ethic into this ragtag band of boys we call our Black Stars, and with that foundation he achieved great things with the Stars.

That’s all Grant needs to do to get our team firing on all cylinders, get them playing as one, a unit. The time frame is not the best, and the Stars are truly in a group of death this time around; but on our worst day we are a better side than most, and thus if we escape that group we can expect to achieve the semi final target.

Avram Grant should not be sacked if he fails to go past the group stage, and most certainly he would not; but for a manager of his calibre handling a side of this calibre, a group stage exit would be simply unacceptable.

Avram Grant’s experienced enough to know the vagaries of a managerial role, and being forced to take on a side impromptu is one of them. That should not be an excuse for mediocre work being put in.