Herbert Mensah: Award-Winning Changemaker at Ghana Football Awards Says Ghana Sports Must Embrace Excellence

The Ghana Football Awards, yes, it’s always an honour to get awarded something. To get a Living Legend Award, for me, it is an honour, but critically for me, it’s not about me. There were many people on the journey with me. I am a change maker, somebody who chooses to get out there. Nana-Brew Butler is absolutely correct. I am controversial.

Not controversial to cause mischief or to cause hurt, but controversial because there’s a recognition of where we are makes no sense. A recognition that we do need to shift what we’re about in order to achieve. And that for me is critical.

So if it is in the world of football, yes, I did come at a time when Kotoko could not raise a team to go to Cape Coast, and were deducted points by the GFA for failing to show up in a match against Dwarfs. But that’s NOT the story. The story is the journey that then began. And the story probably began 15, 20 years beforehand, when Kotoko allowed itself to be decimated. Players taken from there into three or four directions.

One was to Ashgold, the other one was with our Late Chairman Georgido through to Swedru All Blacks and thirdly when the likes of Edmund Copson and the rest then left and went through to other clubs without any discernible proper protocols.

The fact of the matter is that Kotoko did it to themselves. And those who were custodians allowed it to happen. That’s the bottom line.

To now rebuild the club and persuade the supporters when I was then told by seasoned journalists would not be possible. The gate receipts were 28 Cedis or whatever it was at that time. The stadiums were completely empty, doors open.

Even passersby were not going into Oseikrom to watch the Porcupine Warriors play. So the immediate issue was to decide what you are looking for here? And how big is a dream? You can patchwork, but everybody who knows me knows I don’t do patchwork. So those who joined me on that dream………that is the critical issue.

And it was clear. In my mind, Barcelona could not call itself Barcelona if the Nou Camp was empty, and neither could Real Madrid if its stadiums were empty. Nor could the Manchester Uniteds the Bayern Munichs, the Milans and those who have built up their clubs into being “big” clubs with supporters week in week out in Europe in excess of 60,000. And so therefore, Kotoko had to not talk about the legacy, the old days of what happened in ’71 or ’83. We have to talk about the fact that today, at that time, it was broken and we needed to fix it. That was the first stage, to bring back the belief, how we communicated and how we dealt then, to bring back a structure of excellence, contract of players, player welfare, way back then we were big on player welfare. Doctors flying in to deal with players, training methology changed to ensure that players would not get injured with the kind of approach that we had in play, and that became the big issue. A series of Coaches both local and foreign until we settled on the extraordinary Ernst Middendorp. training methods changed, the rebuilding of the park, re-grassing of it, the travel from Kumasi out to towns and villages to recruit talent, bring them back into schools, train school teacher to be trainers.

Today a lot of things that apply in the world of rugby, not that I apply, but the big nations that I deal with do apply.

That if you want to create tomorrow’s hero you must deal with today’s child. That is a critical issue.

Warriors may be born, but they need to be nurtured, exposed, given self-belief.

That talent that is given to them by God then becomes meaningful.

And we needed to do that. So it was a journey. In my view, always a 10 year journey. And in reaching where we did ahead of time, we were simply part of a journey.

So somebody said, but we don’t see all the titles. Absolutely, you don’t, because the base upon which we were building was non-existent, it had been obliterated by self and by politics. And the challenge was now to rebuild that to the point that there would be so many national players …. Kotoko would be the team that everybody wanted to come back to and make into something really great.

Of course, we pitched ahead of our time in trying to get players, the Boakyes and Kufors and the rest, ahead of time. It was a bit too early for some of them, but the seed was sown.

In the aftermath of May 9th, we kept at it, and 24 years later, we’ve kept the flame burning with a band of people. So when I pick up a Living Legend Award, I pick it up not just for myself, but for a whole range of people who also gave time, commitment, effort, shed tears, and spent time away from their families to create something different, something new, and something truly exciting.

I’ve received many awards over time, and I always make the same point. Recognize those who people cannot see, without whom you could have achieved nothing.

I thank the organizers and encourage them to use the platform they have to help reset our country. In the same way that I reset Kotoko, Ghana sports needs to be reset. We need to move from a nation of mediocrity to one of excellence. Clearly, we have the natural talent that is indisputable. We have the ability to compete, the ability to deliver, the ability to win at different levels in different ways.

Our administrative structures are wrong, and the arrogance that we have internally means we don’t recognize that the world has changed. Training has changed. Wellness has changed. Structures for competition have changed. Grassroots sports development has changed. Inter-schools have changed.

And that there are global comparisons that we need to get ahead of our game if we are to be able to achieve anything at all. So I would ask, and I did ask, that the people who put together these kinds of organizations, these kinds of events, help put together a reset button. A reset button that will bring about change. A reset button that will bring about change and help Ghana get back to where it really deserves to be.

Herbert mensah via his social media handle