I am still reliving the Black Stars disastrous showing against Mexico on Wednesday, and I am beside myself with grief over the manner of the 2:1 loss.

Was it strange that the Black Stars lost? No it was not. At least it was not the first time the team was losing a match, not least to the Mexicans who ran away with a 1:0 win two years earlier.

Was it then strange that the Black Stars conceded two goals within the last 13 minutes of the scrappy game? Certainly not! Our own Samuel Osei Kufuor's streamy tears in defeat at the hands of Manchester United while he played at Bayern Munich is a great lesson for us all; football is won only after the final whistle, not even in 90 minutes!

My beef with the loss, (or rather my bone), rests squarely with the entire team, coach Claude Le Roy and in a large measure, substitute goalkeeper Patrick Antwi.

The entire team had a poor attitude to the game, displaying some air of superiority at the very team that once beat them, and for Le Roy, his growing desire for defensive play while his heart continues to sink low when he must make a decision to pull out any of the established members of the team.

As for Patrick Antwi, he has himself to blame for blowing a fine opportunity to keep a jersey for himself in the national teams. As things stand now, something monumentally enterprising and convincing will be the only key to open the doors for him again.

Patrick Antwi

	A line up of the Black Stars pledging to do the nation proud.

I thought it is the first rule for goalkeepers worth their salt to resort to first-time clearance of any balls spilled or passed into the box, and recourse to keep the ball in the vital area is only an option when there is absolutely no danger.

I have heard many commentators question the rational in Essien sending the ball back to him at that moment and I know those queries are only knee-jerk responses to the bitter experience. We may as well question why Essien was fielded in the match at all, and for me that is as far as we can stretch the irrational arguments.

The pass was technically a perfect one, directed away from the goal; so that even if Patrick Antwi had fallen down without touching the ball, it would not have posed any threat at all to the team, it would have rolled out of touch for a corner kick.

Now our goalkeeper decides to keep the ball in play, and did the unthinkable by pushing the ball into his goal zone while keeping his eyes down, oblivious of the approaching opponent.

Suddenly he sees the player too close for comfort and being the last player, he rather puts in a feeble leg and goes to ground as well at the same time rather than throwing his whole frame behind the ball to attempt to spill it away.

How does anyone blame Essien for this? It is Patrick Antwis cross alone and like Jesus Christ in the Bible, he must bear it all alone. I have seen him in matches for the Meteors and Liberty Professionals and I have no doubt that Patrick is a far better player than he proved himself on Wednesday.

Superiority complex/complacency

There is this lesson I picked up and decided it will be part of me for the rest of my life; never to underestimate any problem or opposition. Indeed I picked this lesson rather forcefully from one-time Asante Kotoko Chairman and later CEO, Herbert Mensah.

If for any reason he was not with the team in the days preceding any game, he would call up anyone close to the players while they trained. All he needs to know is that everyone; players and team officials and all else close to the team, are happy and wearing big smiles. That, for him was a dangerous signal!

Yes, he read danger where everyone else seemed too comfortable and happy; and in many ways he let his management members saw the need to transmit the message of seriousness to the players. If you make merry and pat yourselves in front of the players, all it meant to them was that all was well and that the game was under control.

Unfortunately, that air of comfort and superiority is all I read of the Black Stars players and their officials. The team indeed has a lot of potential but it appears to me that we may fluff it all too soon.

I have been wondering what Eric Addo for instance was thinking when he guided his opponent into the box before deciding to pull him down, and like any footballer, he had the nerves to protest the decision, and even sneered at the referee!

My guess is that he gave the attacker no chance of posing a threat and only reacted when it was too late. Perhaps his new found role in defence away from the midfield where he is more comfortable is too much of an assignment and Le Roy may want to look for solutions.

Claude Le Roy

I admire Le Roy a lot for the sort of luck he seems to have brought to the team; he appears to have a magic wand for winning most of the very important games. But for a lot of his technical decisions, I have had to search my mind and friends for answers; they are largely baffling.

How do I explain this for instance: that a team looking to reverse an earlier loss, would play rather defensively, with only Manuel Junior Agogo upfront? And what is even more baffling than this, that when it came to bringing on another attacker, he came to replace the lone striker?

The effect of Agogo slugging it out alone upfront was that regularly he needed to revert to the midfield to look for the ball on a day Sule Muntari and Laryea Kingston were so anonymous.

I think Le Roy would want to take a better control of the team and manage it well. Who doesnt know the potency of players like Sule and Kingston in the Black Stars? But seriously, do we need a whole game to realize that a particular player was not in a game. As I sit here nearly 24 hours after the game, I am struggling to believe that Sule for instance played the entire duration.

Le Roy is proving himself a feeble heart when it comes to taking the big decisions. At the Ghana 2008 tournament and on Wednesday, he made substitutions at a ridiculously unbelievable time when those changes were not expected to make much impact.

He is a builder of the game and with him the Black Stars may not die (as in inviting youthful players into the side to sustain it). In this light I admire him also for giving Patrick Antwi, Harrison Afful and Eric Bekoe, some opportunity. Eric for me had just too little time in the game to make any fair assessment of his contribution. I can only commend his attitude to the game and his peculiar focus, and knowing what he has been doing on the local front, I wish him well.

Harrison Afful proved he can go places and I hope he presses on. For Le Roy, let him be reminded that the Black Stars lost for the second successive time to Mexico and that the next time we play any game, (important or not), we will need to play with 11 men at any given time. That I did not see on Wednesday!


Author: Isaac Yeboah