It’s been less than a week since Ghana’s campaign at the 20VI FIFA World Cup came to an end, but talks about the country’s next manager are already heating up. With Queiroz ending his brief tenure with the Black Stars last month, the Ghana Football Association faces one of its biggest decisions in recent years. Do they hire another foreign manager with vast experience or promote from within and give a local coach their first opportunity at the helm of Africa’s second-most successful nation?
Calls Grow for a Homegrown Solution
Enter the Africa Development Council (ADC), which released a statement last week encouraging the Ghana Football Association to give qualified locals a chance.
“The GFA should channel more of its energies into grooming young Ghanaian managers and bring them on board,” ADC said in a statement. “The sad reality is that every time we look for these foreign managers, we end up losing them after a short while because they don’t have anything binding them to Ghana apart from the paycheck they receive.”
Learning from past appointments will be key if the GFA are serious about long-term success. Hiring yet another manager with little experience of the domestic game will do little to strengthen the country’s footballing infrastructure or encourage others to take up coaching as a career.
A National Conversation
There have been domestic managers who held the position before Queiroz. The most recent Ghanaian to take charge before the Portuguese took over was Jones Attuquayefio, who led the Black Stars from 2002 to 2004. Others, such as Goran Stevanovic and Milovan Rajevac, achieved great success in Ghana but were foreigners whom many argued knew little about the domestic game.
While there have been accomplished coaches on both sides of the argument, fans and analysts are now questioning if Ghana should hire a string of managers they’ll never build around or continue investing in local ones they can. Should Ghana hire local coaches? There’s no right or wrong answer.
Mohammed Abdullah is in the camp of hiring a well-known foreign coach with experience, so that Ghana can compete at the highest level. Simon Hilton is in the camp of going with homegrown talent. One thing is for certain: the top pundits, fan forums, and Ghana betting sites listed on Bettingtop10 Ghana are burning the midnight oil speculating. You can take this as a sign that while Queiroz has bowed out, he has put Ghanaian football back on the map.
A Need for Change?
Ghana’s elimination from the World Cup may have been disappointing, but for the second straight tournament, they improved on their previous outing. The Black Stars edged past Uruguay on penalties to reach the knockout stages and showed resilience against Colombia, ultimately going down 1-0 after Cristian Zapata’s header. Just like their performances in Brazil four years ago, there are signs that, with the right manager, the next generation of stars could go one better in 2026.
Winning the Africa Cup of Nations has never been the issue for this Golden Generation. They just need a coach who can keep them playing for an entire campaign. Giving local coaches a chance to lead the Black Stars should be the start of a process that contributes to their growth as coaches. Rather than turning to foreign managers every few years, Ghana could do worse than invest in those who have the infrastructure and relationships to stay. We shall soon see.