If anybody was in doubt about the passion with which Ghanaians are attached to the game of football, then that doubt is gone forever. If anybody had any doubt about the patriotic and enthusiastic support of Ghanaians for their national football team, the Black Stars, then that also has been cast into the dustbin of history. Indeed, I have learned a lot of lessons from the just-ended Ghana 2008 and I do hope that we have all learned lessons that we can share in order to advance Ghana's status ,as a football nation. One lesson that particularly gladdens my heart is the deep knowledge of the game of football that most Ghanaians now possess. I was particularly impressed with the deep and well-informed analysis by football pundits in all the media - electronic, print and radio. From my elementary schooldays to date, I have formed the habit of reading newspapers from the back page, since sports news are mostly relegated to the end of the paper but this time around most newspapers put football on their front pages. It is gratifying that match reports and analyses in most of the papers remind me that the country has very intelligent and knowledgeable sports journalist of the calibre of Kofi Badu, Ken Bediako, and others of yesteryear. However, the sports journalist who impressed me most was Ebo Quansah. His reporting, analysis and previews were flawless. One painful lesson, that is quite worrying, is the fact that the attitude of our technical men and football administrators haven't changed a bit and they often consign the brilliant analysis and suggestions of our sports journalists and the general public to the dustbin. A typical issue, that is still a subject of debate to date, was the John Mensah issue. The consensus from both professional analysts and the laymen was clear on this issue - replace a defender with a defender and let Michael Essien continue to operate at his best in the mid-field from where he was creating goals and scoring goals himself. Even FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, agrees with that consensus, and yet it was ignored by the GFA and its technical men and on top of that fielded some inexperienced players for such a crucial match; and so it came to pass that it was only in the semi-final that the Black Stars failed to score a goal. Well, this reminds me of the popular saying that "the voice of the people is the voice of God" and you ignore it at your own peril. One lesson I have also learned is that John Mensah is probably the best central defender in the world. He covered every inch at the back to protect the glaring weakness in the rest of the defence, that is, lack of pace. Most of the goals the Black Stars conceded in this competition (and in the World Cup in Germany) were as a result of the inability of the other defenders (particularly the full backs) to quickly recover their positions after losing ball possession from an attacking mode. It was one of such rescue missions that led to the professional foul and the dismissal of John Mensah. I believe John Mensah will be the first to admit that he sorely missed his dependable and reliable central defensive partner, Shillah Illiasu. One thing I would dearly advise our foot¬ball administrators to do is to put their ears to the ground and pick up some of the negative things that are said about them. In my "Phobia" days in the 1970s to the mid-1980s I used to have a permanent seat in the upper terrace of the Accra Sports Stadium together with a few colleagues, including Mr Ochere, then Bursar of Accra Academy, and the late Prof. La Anyane. In those days we used to hear statements like "the coach has taken bribe" (probably for fielding a particular player), or "the referee has taken bribe" (for decisions that go against their team). To date such unfounded allegations and rumours are still around and in the case of the national teams they are directed towards the GFA and their technical team (particularly after our loss in the semi-final). Suspicions that footballers and their agents put all sorts of pressures and inducements on officials to pick and feature them in our national teams at all levels in order to raise their commercial values do not augur well for the game. The only way to do away with these negative suspicions and rumours is for officials to do what is right at all times and also try as much as possible to be in con¬stant touch with the general football public. There were times when other African countries sent emissaries to Ghana to learn from our football success story. It is time for us to learn from the success story of Egypt. The first lesson we have to learn is the fact that Egypt has a very strong domestic professional football league in which the players are very well remunerated and therefore the incentive to play abroad is minimised. The other lesson is the fact that a competent local coach who understands the culture and the social habits of the people is more likely to bring success to a national team than a foreign coach. The operating word here is "competent". Here again we can learn from Egypt, and also from our earlier most successful local coach, Charles Kumi Gyamfi. The background of the two most successful African local coaches is very similar. Both played for their national teams; both played professional football; both had the requisite educational qualifications to enable them to proceed from there to train for the coaching diploma. The question is: Can we get a local coach with a similar background? Jones Attuquayefio comes close to that, even though he never played professional football and has never been dressed down in the dressing room by a professional football team coach. Even in his case, his earlier successes with Accra Hearts of Oak and the Benin national team have been severely dented by his abysmal handling of the national Under 23 team at the All Africa Games in Algeria and the Olympic qualifying matches. Elsewhere, he would have been replaced by now. Meanwhile, I would like once again to congratulate the President, John Agyekum Kufuor, and his government on the excellent job they did in providing the facilities for a successful Ghana 2008. I am aware that some of the visiting teams were not satisfied with their accommodation facilities in Tamale, but that did not detract from the government's idea to spread this most important once-a-life-time event to reach the northern parts of Ghana. In any case, like many other endeavours, the Kufuor government has laid a strong foundation for the development of football and sports in general. This is in line with the belief of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) that “ a sporting nation is also a healthy nation" as enshrined in the manifestos of the party since 1992. Source: Prof. Wayo Seini/Daily Graphic