By Christopher Opoku So the news is out. The Confederation of African Football has thrown out an appeal by the Ghana Football Association against its decision to ban the Black Starlets for two years. The decision was taken by CAF because of discrepancies in the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) test results for Ghana juvenile midfielder Isaac Twum. The GFA was confident of overturning the decision but on Wednesday, CAF dismissed the appeal as baseless and lacking merit. To give some background to the case, Isaac Twum is a February 14, 1998 born per his official documents and participated in the last edition of the African Junior Championship in Morocco two years ago. He was scouted while playing in the Schools and Colleges competition for Koforidua Technical Institute (KOTECH) and was eligible for the 2013 Championship after the mandatory wrist MRI scans results placed him on Grade 1 of the CAF classifications. With age on his side, Twum now 16 years had his name registered as part of Ghana’s squad for the Niger 2015 qualifiers and his MRI scan placed him at Grade 2 as at March 2014 when Ghana submitted its list to CAF. The retest results showed a slight discrepancy with that of the initial test [done in March] but Twum was still within the age limit to make him eligible to feature for Ghana – he has after seven months from the initial test moved from Grade 2 to 3 of the ratings. It must be noted CAF has a 6-grading system, which is used to determine the eligibility of players to the CAF U-17 category. Players who fall within Grades 1-5 are classified as being 18 years and below while those on Grade 6 are to be 19 years and above and automatically not qualified to play in the African Under 17 Championship. Ghana eliminated Cameroon to qualify for the 2015 African Under 17 Nations Cup, but Cameroon protested the eligibility of Twum, as well as Benjamin Asiedu. CAF’s decision to ban Ghana was based on investigations regarding Twum. Now, my opinion on the whole sorry mess will not be pleasant, even though I am aware that the GFA will try to explore ways of taking the case as far as the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). For me, this is the end result of poor planning and an unwillingness to listen to the advice of the GFA Technical Committee. Before I even explain what I mean, with the advent of MRI testing to ascertain the true ages of players at Under 17 level, one of the things the Black Starlets Committee should have done was to ensure that nobody from the abortive 2013 Morocco campaign should have been included in the current Black Starlets squad, in order to avoid any possible controversy. Besides, we were all told that the Black Starlets Management Committee together with the Paa Kwesi Fabin-led technical bench of the team were doing serious scouting for players. The question I ask is this; could Twum not have been excluded from the team, or are we being told that the scouting exercise they undertook did not result in more talents being spotted? Would it be ok for us all to critically ask questions about whether the scouting exercise was properly done, or not Again, my information is that the GFA Technical Committee advised that the Black Starlets coaching job should be handed over to Yaw Preko, himself a World Cup winner at Juvenile level in 1991, with former Ghana striker Felix Aboagye as his assistant. The argument of the Technical Committee was that Preko’s experiences at that level as a player, coupled with his stint as assistant to Sellas Tetteh at the Under 20 level, would equip him well for the job. Aboagye has also been working as a youth and assistant coach for Liberty Professionals and so the Technical Committee felt that the two men would be ideal candidates. The Black Starlets Management Committee ignored the advice of the Technical Committee and stuck with Paa Kwesi Fabin, with Nuru Ahmed as his assistant. It was a tremendous show of faith by the management Committee at the time because Fabin had failed to qualify the Black Starlets for the 2013 FIFA Under 17 World Cup. The decision to include Twum, in my opinion is what has brought us to this point. Indeed, there should have been a strict policy that after participating in one qualifying campaign, a player cannot participate in the next one even if he is within age. Twum’s documents show that he is within age, but there were discrepancies in the MRI testing results, hence the ban. What has made matters worse is some information I picked up to the effect that an unnamed influential member of the Black Starlets Committee sent an email expressing his disquiet over the whole issue and indicating that Ghana was in the wrong. The email was meant for another member of the Management Committee but was inadvertently sent to a member of the CAF Appeals Committee! As a matter of urgency, Fred Crentsil and Wilfred Osei Kwaku, Chairman and vice Chairman of the Black Starlets Management Committee respectively should be removed from their positions on the Committee and GFA President Kweis Nyantakyi has to act. What is even more serious is that CAF could decide to ban Ghana from all age competitions for the next two years because of this and that would mean that the Black Satellites and the Black Meteors would also be affected. With these developments, the GFA doesn’t have much chance of overturning the ban even if the case went up to CAS. Crentsil and Osei Kwaku have to take full responsibility for the situation and they have to be axed. Anything other than that and the GFA will not be seen to be strong in making certain unpopular decisions. What has happened has brought the GFA and Ghana football into disrepute and the sooner the hammer comes down, the better!
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 08:43:47 +0000
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