It is January 2024 and Ghana has just exited AFCON 2023 on a whimper.
A 2-1 loss to unfancied Cape Verde, followed by 2-2 stalemates with Egypt and Mozambique condemned Ghana to a group stage exits – the first in the country’s history without a win.
The verdict was unanimous – Chris Hughton had to be sacked as head coach. Less than 24 hours after the Mozambique draw, Hughton’s sacking was announced by the GFA.
Focus then shifted towards finding Hughton’s replacement.
On 23rd January, the Ghana Football Association (GFA) announced a highly ambitious criteria for selecting the replacement.
To qualify as a candidate for the Black Stars job, the applicant had to be;
- Proven Winner: Must have a track record of winning, particularly with top Men’s National Teams or Club football.
- Highest License/Experience: Holder of the highest football license in the world with over 15 years of coaching experience.
- Philosophy: A philosophy that aligns or complements the Ghanaian football DNA.
- Reconstruction & Talent Development: Proven track record in team reconstruction, organization, and development of young talent.
- Leadership & Discipline: Proven disciplinarian, tactician, and strong leadership skills.
On 15th March, however, the GFA sidestepped the criteria and announced Otto Addo as its new head coach.
Otto Addo’s only prior experience in coaching was when Ghana hired him in an interim role between February and December 2022.
Yet, the GFA, was prepared to gamble.
The results wete instant and devastating.
Otto failed to win any of the six groups stage matches as Ghana finished bottom of Group F with 3 points, behind Niger with 7, Sudan with 8 and Angola with 14 points.
It was the first time the Black Stars had failed to win a game in an AFCON Qualifying campaign.
And why not? He had no prior experience to draw from.
He had no body of work. He had not tried any coaching principles anywhere to be in the position to determine what works within what tactical context.
That meant, making sense of the players untie skillsets and what conditions they could thrive in, was a problem far beyond the competence of Otto Addo.
If the results were bad, Otto Addo’s excuses after each one made things worse.
After losing at the Baba Yara Stadium for the first time in 24 years, Otto Addo said, “You have to work on the pitch to get better, because it’s very difficult.”
Five days later, Niger held Ghana to a 1-1 draw on a lush green, blameless pitch in Berkane, Morocco.
When the pitch excuse was exposed for its limited value, if any at all, Otto Addo found solace in something else: luck.
After a goalless draw against Sudan in Accra, he defiantly said, “Sudan was very lucky today. That is all.”
“The next time we meet them in Libya, they won’t be lucky.”
Luck or not, Ghana lost the reverse fixture, which was also the next game, by two goals to nil, to Sudan.
There was more to come.
Otto Addo stirred the hornets’ nest in October 2024, when he said, “I can’t compare players who have played for Chelsea, Juventus, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Inter Milan, and AC Milan to our current squad,” Addo stated.
“Those players have set a very high standard. With all due respect to our current players, they may reach that level one day, but they are not there yet. This is not an excuse for our performances; we must strive to beat every opponent.”
It was the classic case of a drowning rookie, clutching at straws.
Then came the mess of the captaincy.
For someone who had played for Ghana and previously served in various coaching and scouting capacities, his clumsy handling of the captaincy was confusing.
He shuttled through Thomas Partey, Mohammed Kudus before finally settling on Jordan Ayew.
It was clumsy and disrupted the team harmony before a crisis meeting in London with Jordan Ayew, set the team back on track.
That episode showed, that while Otto Addo was familiar with the Black Stars, he did not quite understand the character and culture of the team especially in terms of the captaincy.
But for the GFA’s inexplicable tolerance for incompetence, Otto Addo should have been sacked for failing to qualify for the AFCON.
2025 brought some respite when he secured World Cup Qualification but still his numbers have been anything but convincing.
In all, Otto Addo won eight out of twenty-two matches, and lost nine.
He managed a win percentage of 36.36% but lost 40% of the time.
In international friendlies, Otto Addo won just two out of 11.
The results were disastrous.
Somehow, the football was worse.
Otto Addo gravitate towards conservative, compact football.
Yet, his teams are notoriously porous.
Against Austria on Friday, they shipped in five. Against Germany on Monday, the conceded two but also conceded six big chances.
How do you execute a low black with five defenders and still concede as many chances?
In attack, there has been no choreographed patterns.
What makes that worse is that Otto Addo, for the two years he was in charge, did not know what to do with Ghana’s attacking talent.
Antoine Semenyo is having an world class campaign in the Premier League. Abdul Fatawu Issahaku is without doubt Leicester City’s best player.
Yet, when in Ghana colours, the pair are often reduced to chasing opponents as auxiliary defenders for Seidu Alidu and Caleb Yirenkyi on the right, and Gideon Mensah and Derrick Kohn on the left.
They often receive the ball in areas where they cannot threaten, or are left with too much to do.
Recently, Otto Addo has similarly misprofiled Caleb Yirenkyi.
The midfielder has been shoved to the right back position, resulting in error prone performances; a penalty against South Korea and an error-leading to a goal against Austria.
Yirenkyi is Ghana’s best midfielder in the current season and should be playing in midfield to build cohesiveness with his teammates. His emergence has coincided with Thomas Partey’s decline.
Truth is Partey will not get better. At best, he has one more AFCON in him.
It is therefore imperative to wean the team off the Partey dependence and encourage the fresh faces to learn from him and take responsibility when the time comes.
But I guess knowing it is one thing. Being able to make it work however, it an entirely different problem.
For nine months, Otto Addo has failed to do that. Just as he failed over two years to get a tune out of this talented generation.
There will be no tears.
There should be no tears.
Just lessons in how not to coach the Black Stars.
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