It is very easy to handle a ball of kenkey. As my bosom friend Rever­end (self- appointed) Kofi Kokotako put it, it is the kind of ball that almost every fool can manage. You only have to get some pepper and ‘fish-head’ and then your massive jaws can take care of the rest.

A revolution is not a tea party, said Mao Tse-Tung. In simile, a football revolution is not a kenkey party. If anybody had thought that organising a disciplined, winsome team was synon­ymous to organising a kenkey festival, then of course they were living in a fool’s paradise.

We shall come back to that later on but for the moment, let’s recast what happened on the first day the Black Stars played a game.

If you noticed carefully, you’d have realised that somehow the squad was not prepared and the handlers should literally have asked for the postpone­ment of the entire tournament. They were too many foreign-based players invited to come and joke.

Anyhow, I was really impressed by how the professionals looked. They appeared well-fed and well-paid and Nii Odartey Lamptey looked very beautiful in a jelly curl jerry hairdo. Probably just before he entered the dressing room, he had spent quite some time under the dryer.

No wonder he looked like a par­ticipant of a beauty pageant. It really was going to be a beauty contest for the Sikaman boys while the Guineans came to play football.

And the Guineans really stretched the Stars full-length till international star C. K. Akunnor, who played with all his might and soul, set the stadium ablaze with a bullet- shot to remind his compatriots that it was no beauty palaver in Tunisia ‘94. That was our saviour and it came in the last min­utes.

Earlier, Odartey Lamptey who had consistently not fared well in any Black Stars match was elected to take a penalty kick when more experienced players could have done the job spick and span. When I saw that it was Odartey going in for the kick, I just felt inside me that it was either going to be ‘over the bar’ or something worse.

LESS-EXPERIENCED

Fortunately, the ball did not go over bar, but neither did it enter the net. The keeper made light-work of it, having realised that we weren’t serious after all.

In fact by allowing a relatively less-experienced player like Odartey to take that kick showed clearly that the squad was either unprepared or that there was no seriousness in the team. Anyhow, Nii cannot be blamed for our quarter-final tragedy because he did not play in that match. What about strategy and being wise? The Lord Je­sus Christ has always admonished us to be wise as the serpent. In Tunisia, we didn’t exhibit the kind of wisdom and prudence Jesus talked about.

When Prince Polley scored against Senegal, everyone rejoiced and only a few realised that it was our doom. Losing or drawing against Senegal would have been the last remarkable genius of the century knowing very well that a win would mean clashing with an arch-rival Cote d’Ivoire in the quarter-final.

To deliberately lose in some matches is part of strategy used by teams worldwide to wriggle their way through to the final spot. It was not that Cote d’Ivoire was not unbeatable, but it was certain that they would be more of a problem than Zambia as far as Ghana was concerned.

WISDOM

As it were, if the handlers had displayed the wisdom of the aged, they would have pep- talked the boys to lose that match or draw, having at the back of the mind that not all that glitter is gold. As it turned out to be, a win over Senegal was more of a trage­dy than the comedy all thought it was.

Now, the entire campaign to win the cup in Tunisia became a non-start­er the moment George Arthur was dropped. And when he lobbied and was recalled to join the team, it was the beginning of tragic instances that beset the Stars’ team.

In fact, when George was dropped, I was unhappy about it and com­plained. But when he was given the green-light afterwards, I was shocked. I reckoned that it was very improper for many reasons.

First, it meant that the coaches and technical men were impotent and were being manipulated like a marionette to do against their wish. Secondly, to be a big embarrassment to Kofi Mbeah who was going to be told that “the big men say they should drop you-o! They say George Arthur is soccer-god. If we drop him our chop money will be in jeopardy.”

I wonder how Kofi Mbeah, my idol, took that message. What an embar­rassment to a budding star. The psy­chological trauma and all that!

Certainly his patriotism is going to be affected and I wonder if he would be willing to play for his country at any future date. If it happens, should the GFA not accept blame?