Not many people thought Otto Addo would be making a return to the Black Stars anytime soon, after leaving the job he held in an interim capacity at the end of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, but even those who’d claim they did would be incredibly dishonest to say they saw it happening this quickly.
If it is true that the committee saddled with the responsibility of finding a new Ghana head coach by the Ghana Football Association (GFA) received scores of applications, as widely reported in Ghanaian media, surely, Addo couldn’t have been the most appealing of the lot — and that’s without even considering his record the first time around (winning only a third of the games he oversaw, with his team conceding more goals than they scored).
In seeking a replacement for Chris Hughton, who was deservedly dismissed after a humiliating first-round exit from the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), the GFA made it clear exactly what they sought in the Irishman’s successor.
Go through each of those boxes, however, and you’d find Addo hardly checks any of them satisfactorily — perhaps with the exception of the tiny bit of said criteria which required that the next Black Stars manager have a “proven track record in… development of young talent”.
And yet here Addo is, back in the job in a more substantive capacity, furnished with three assistant coaches in whom Ghanaians have little reason to repose any confidence (one is an entirely unknown quantity, and the other two are familiar only as far as their respective playing careers are concerned) and handed a task that many feel is well beyond him.
True, Addo finds the Black Stars in a similar state to what they were in when he took charge of the team this time two years ago: fresh from a traumatising AFCON experience, and in dire need of a revival.
Back in 2022, Addo didn’t have to do much to achieve that effect, strictly speaking, and almost instantly got Ghanaians behind him by masterminding two draws in his first two games, a World Cup qualifying playoff against arch-rivals Nigeria, to secure a place at Qatar 2022.
But the groundswell of belief he’d stirred up and inspired in the public with that early feat had pretty much dried up by time Addo vacated the office at the end of that year, leaving not with a bang but with a whimper in the immediate aftermath of a Mundial not many would remember very fondly.
This time, however, Addo is in it for the long haul — three years — and would have to show himself capable of much more. His ability to build a durable team, to engineer the cultural reset the Black Stars have needed for a while now, and to win and maintain the support of a disillusioned nation would come under the greatest scrutiny.
Addo’s first game back at the helm, incidentally, pits him again against Nigeria this Friday. The stakes are much lower on this occasion — it’s only a friendly — but the fixture (to be followed a few days later with an even more low-profile one versus Uganda) would still be considered a solid test of what Addo could go on to achieve with a Ghana team whose strengths and weaknesses he should be well-acquainted with from his earlier spell.
Competitive action resumes in June, when Ghana would have a 2026 World Cup qualification campaign to steer back on track, so this month’s upcoming assignments represent Addo’s chance to warm up and also offer Ghanaians — a people wary of comebacks even for previously successful national team managers, never mind under someone who barely moved the needle the first time around — some valuable insights into determining whether or not their skepticism is unfounded.
For once, they’d hope they’re proved wrong.
Source: medium.com
