I liked the Black Stars players’ initiation dance. Such videos of the team in camp give the public a great feel of what goes on in the team's closet, and especially when they’re positive developments, they’ve got a way of fostering unity.
Some players have good dancing skills, and others are as poor as me on the dance floor. I don’t know which of the players danced well. Still, my verdict on the video is that those activities are healthy for national team bonding and notably so when ours is a new team with players drawn from various facets of cultural life.
The initiation dance, therefore, levels the ground. It brings the players together to see themselves as one. Even if it’s superficial, it merges their varying backgrounds, creating an atmosphere of brotherliness. If we were fixated on the lack of team unity in the past, this budding sign of a unified team should be appreciated.
I believe the feeling the players give us via those videos mirrors the state of affairs in the management team of the Black Stars, the Ghana Football Association (GFA) and the Ministry of Youth and Sports. It must be the same because ahead of the World Cup and beyond, we need all the team organs, including the public, to be in synch given our past. Let’s be guided by history.
With that, we can expect the best and make Ghana proud. We’ve to be international about all we want to achieve with the senior national team. I’ve spent paragraphs on this aspect of our team-building process because to me those things have often been our bane. Brazil, Nicaragua and Switzerland – these are essential friendlies.
How the team responds in the trio of matches perhaps would give us more refined insights into the work done by Coach Otto Addo and his assistants. I’ve loved the interviews from France and the build-up to the whole friendlies. It would be interesting to see who plays where against Brazil, the performance, and the outcome.
We should come out well in the Brazil game, maybe with a goal or two. It’s convenient to say results don’t matter in trials, but they count when playing heavyweights like Brazil, a few months away from the World Cup. Nicaragua also comes as a good test, and far from underrating or disrespecting them, we should be capable of subduing them.
Switzerland, I think, would be a delight to watch. They’re a side not really seen as a powerhouse European football, but they’re one team with the discipline to stretch any opponent in the world. It’s great we got these matches. Let the Black Stars go out there and give Ghanaians something cheerful like their dance moves.
