Ghana’s oldest football club is a mess

Sports news for Monday, February 22, 2021

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

02/22/2021

Imagine going to school and meeting different groups of teachers every week because school fires them or teachers quit after school days? Now stop imagining because this is the reality of Ghana’s oldest football club.

They’ve barely managed to keep a coach for an entire season over the past decade and more. In the world of football, this is not unusual as the firing and hiring of coaches is an undeniable feature of the game.

The life of a football coach at any job is fleeting and the case of Frank Lampard at Chelsea is a perfect illustration of how the hosanna praise of a coach could morph into calls to “crucify” in one. wink.

The Afede era and an uninteresting trophy record

Since Togbe Afede took over the reins of the club in 2011 – as the largest single shareholder, Hearts of Oak has hired and fired twenty-two coaches, add Nii Noi, the interim manager and you have twenty-three managers hired.

The total sum of trophies under these coaches is zero.

More worrying are the reasons why most of these coaches have been fired or have chosen to resign. More often than not, it is problems off the field that determine these situations.

This is either the resignation of the coaches due to excessive interference or the fact that the de facto owner of the club feels disrespected by the conduct of the coach, as evidenced by the case of Kenichi Yatsuhashi and David Duncan.

The reason for these two coaches’ sacking was unrelated to performance and fans must have watched angrily as the club fell under the whims and whims of one.

Messy these last days

That a coach can be fired by a club is not news. At home and abroad, history is full of licensed coaches. It does, however, become a matter of concern if your club leadership tends to be triggered happy and fire and hire without resorting to a proper long term plan.

In the case of a traditional club like Accra Hearts of Oak, the club lost three technicians in the space of four days. The last few days at the club were downright complicated.

It escalates into a realm of absurdity when your famous team leader’s name appears in the media as being allegedly kicked out of the club.

Such is the situation with the rumored veteran Nii Sabahn Quaye set to come out, days after coaches Kosta Papic, Asare Bediako and Ben Owu all shot down their tools.

Messier’s departure accounts and internal chaos

While the official statement cites “ personal reasons ” for these departures, numerous reports paint a worrying picture of internal fighting and clashes between the former technical team and the club’s board chaired by Togbe Afede.

Elements within the club have clashed over which player is or is not worth playing, which is a usurpation of the powers of the manager and to some extent his technical team.

As Papic pointed out in the interview with Angel FM, he decided to back down after constant attempts to influence his selection.

Now he’s gone and Hearts is ninth in the standings and for many fans of the game any glimmer of hope the Phobians had of winning a first major trophy in more than a decade seems to be effectively over even before Season No. ‘reaches the midpoint. .

The situation is not better in the conference room too. Modern corporate structures were expected to take over Hearts instead, the club have survived for the past decade under two-man rulership.

The club’s biggest shareholder and a certain Alhaji Akambi whose name and face Hearts fans hate to see or hear.

Disenchanted fans and no light at the end of the tunnel?

At this point, it will take heavenly intervention for the Rainbow Boys to make sense of the season if fit teams like the Olympics, Kotoko, Karela United and others maintain their momentum.

For fans of Hearts, this has been a painful sight for the past decade. The shift from the conservative module which had resourceful fans running the club to a more modernized approach which has shareholders running the club has proven to be a failure.

Instead, recent events remind fans more of the past they were fleeing than the future they hoped to achieve.

If the gossip emanating from the club is anything to say, it is a crisis in its own right at the club.

The 2020/2021 season may only have 15 games, but at Hearts it’s over and the trophy drought continues.