Former Hearts of Oak Chief Executive Officer Vincent Sowah Odotei says decades of poor leadership and ineffective administration are responsible for the decline of Ghanaian football.
Ghana’s national teams and domestic leagues have struggled in recent years to match the country’s traditional standards of competitiveness in continental and global football.
Odotei, now Lead Administrator of Hearts of Oak’s Interim Management Committee (IMC), believes the problems stem from a failure to create effective structures and attract capable people into the administration of the game.
Speaking to Joy Sports, he described the state of Ghanaian football as alarming and said the country lacked the foundations needed to achieve sustainable progress.
“The level of deterioration is so high. It’s been decades of bad leadership. We were not able to attract good people to the administration,” he said.
Odotei said the weaknesses extended beyond leadership, with Ghana also lacking the facilities, tactical preparation and physical infrastructure required to develop competitive teams.
“We don’t have the facilities; we don’t have tactical and physical infrastructure. We don’t have well-structured teams that are driven by a strategy, who are looking at the long term. We are where we are because of decades of bad leadership,” he added.
The former Hearts of Oak chief executive called for a wide-ranging reform of football administration in Ghana.
He said structural weaknesses needed to be addressed if the country was to compete with leading football nations in North Africa, East Africa and Southern Africa.
Among the areas requiring urgent improvement, he listed regulations, organisation, fixture scheduling and the standard of coaching.
Odotei insisted that Ghana must establish the basic systems of the game before attempting a lasting transformation.
“To turn around a system where we will be able to compete with the North Africans and East Africans and the Southern African countries, we will need the transformation of hygienic transformation to deliver a strategic transformation,” he said.
He added: “We need to get the basics right. The basics that will make us competitive: the basics about regulation, order, proper organisation, proper scheduling. Make sure we inject [improve] the way we train our local coaches.”
