“Eiii Black Stars are playing at the Accra Stadium tomorrow and the streets are quiet like this? Who killed the vim? Asem oooo.”

At 7:33 p.m. Ghana time, veteran sports journalist Rosalind Koramah Amoh posted those words on X.

It was Monday night. A few hours remained before Ghana's second AFCON 2027 qualifier against The Gambia.

And she was asking a question that had become impossible to ignore.

Where is the love?

There was a time when the Black Stars did not need to beg Ghanaians to love them.

You could feel it. You could hear it. You could see it. You could touch it.

The final training session before a home game could almost feel like a match itself. Supporters gathered with drums, flags, whistles and songs.

The streets became ceremonial grounds. Ghana flags wrapped on troskies and taxies. Paraphernalias visible across the length of the country.

You could literally touch the mood of the country. No one needed to advertise that the Black Stars were in town.

Journalists watched the players train, studied the tactical shape, assessed who was fit, who was struggling and who might start.

They wrote previews with probable line-ups because they had actually seen the team train.

Under Goran Stevanović. Under Kwasi Appiah. Under Avram Grant. And under Kwasi Appiah again. Recency bias, isn’t it. You can't be begrudge me for that because I was in school Ratomir Djukovic was in charge. I never watched the team at close range, but I could touch the atmosphere wherever I was.

There were things coaches understandably kept away from prying eyes. But there was balance.

The media had access. The supporters had access. The players had a relationship with the people.

And the football, for all its imperfections, still gave Ghanaians something to hold on to.

Look at what Ghana was between 2008 and 2017.

Six consecutive AFCON tournaments.

Six consecutive semi-final appearances.

Two final appearances.

And in between, a World Cup quarter-final in 2010.

Ghanaians complained even then.

We complained about losing semi-finals. We complained about not winning the trophy. We complained about the infamous “fifth-game” barrier. 12 years ago, I wrote a piece on this.

Ghana lost 1-0 to Cameroon in the 2008 semi-final. Lost the 2010 AFCON final to Egypt. Reached the 2010 World Cup quarter-final before losing to Uruguay on penalties. Lost the 2012 and 2013 AFCON semi-finals.

In 2015, Ghana finally broke through the fifth-game barrier, beating Equatorial Guinea to reach the final before losing to Côte d'Ivoire on penalties.

Then came another semi-final in 2017.

We were disappointed.

But we were invested.

That is the difference.

Today, the question is no longer why Ghana cannot win AFCON.

It is why Ghana cannot consistently compete for it.

The last seven years tell a story.

Ghana qualified for AFCON 2021 as group winners, taking 13 points from six qualifying matches.

Then came the tournament.

One point from three games.

A defeat to Morocco. A draw with Gabon. A 3-2 defeat by debutants Comoros.

Ghana finished bottom of its group and suffered its first AFCON group-stage elimination since 2006.

The World Cup offered temporary relief.

Ghana qualified for Qatar 2022 after topping its qualifying group and eliminating Nigeria on away goals in the play-off.

But at the tournament, the Black Stars finished bottom of their group.

A 3-2 defeat to Portugal.

A 3-2 victory over South Korea.

Then a 2-0 defeat to Uruguay.

Three points.

Three goals scored.

Seven conceded.

Another tournament exit without reaching the knockout stage.

Then came AFCON 2023.

Ghana qualified after a campaign that required a final-day 2-1 victory over the Central African Republic.

The tournament itself became another symbol of the problem.

A 2-1 defeat to Cape Verde.

A 2-2 draw with Egypt.

Then a 2-2 draw with Mozambique after Ghana had led 2-0 deep into stoppage time.

Again, Ghana went home in the group stage.

No victory.

Three matches.

Two points.

And then came the breaking point.

AFCON 2025 qualifying.

Six matches.

Zero wins.

Three draws.

Three defeats.

Three points.

Ghana finished bottom of its group and missed the AFCON for the first time in 20 years.

That was no longer a bad tournament.

It was a failure to qualify for the tournament.

And the decline became impossible to hide.

The FIFA rankings tell the same story.

At the end of 2008-2017, Ghana's year-end rankings averaged about 33rd in the world. In that period, Ghana reached as high as 14th and ended 2010 ranked 16th.

From 2020 to 2026, the year-end rankings averaged about 62nd.

Ghana ended 2024 at 77th.

It ended 2025 at 72nd.

The latest official ranking in July 2026 placed Ghana 65th.

That is not a fluctuation.

It is a substantial loss of standing.

And yet, there is an important contradiction.

Ghana still knows how to qualify for the World Cup.

The 2026 qualifying campaign was excellent by the standards of the period: eight wins, one draw and one defeat from 10 matches, 25 points and top spot in Group I.

Ghana qualified for a fifth World Cup.

And in 2026, the Black Stars actually reached the knockout stage.

They beat Panama 1-0, drew 0-0 with England and lost 2-1 to Croatia, before losing 1-0 to Colombia in the round of 32.

That achievement matters.

It also makes the larger question more uncomfortable.

Because Ghana's problem is not that the Black Stars can no longer win football matches.

They can.

It is that they have become increasingly inconsistent in the competitions that once defined their stature.

World Cup qualification remains a strength.

AFCON qualification and tournament performance have deteriorated.

The FIFA ranking has fallen.

And the emotional connection with supporters has weakened.

That last part cannot be measured by a league table.

But you can see it.

The quiet streets.

The empty spaces around training.

The declining anticipation.

The sense that the Black Stars are becoming somebody else's team.

Seven years ago, the Ghana Football Association launched #BringBackTheLove.

The intention was clear: reconnect the national team with Ghanaians.

Seven years later, we have to ask:

Did we bring back the love, or did we build walls around the team?

The security around the Black Stars has become heavier. Police. Military. Private security. Restricted access.

Security is important.

Nobody disputes that.

But security should protect the team, not separate the team from the people it represents.

I have covered this team for years.

I remember when journalists could watch training, assess the team and write informed previews. I remember journalists even running commentary on training sessions.

There was a recognition that the media was part of the ecosystem connecting the national team to the public.

That ecosystem matters.

The journalist tells the story.

The story creates anticipation.

Anticipation brings supporters to the stadium.

Supporters create atmosphere.

Atmosphere feeds the players.

The players make the nation believe.

That triangle once worked.

Today, it is weakening.

Of course, journalists must also accept responsibility.

Criticism is journalism.

Abuse is not.

Where journalists or supporters misbehave, deal with them.

But you punish misconduct.

You do not punish access.

Because the answer to the Black Stars' crisis cannot be found entirely in the press box, the training ground, or the dressing room.

The GFA cannot hide behind coaches either.

Coaches change.

Players change.

Administrations remain.

If the same problems survive different coaches and different generations of players, perhaps we should stop looking only at the touchline and begin looking upstairs.

Ghanaians deserve answers.

How did a team that made six consecutive AFCON semi-finals become a team that could not qualify for the 2025 tournament?

Why has AFCON become a struggle while World Cup qualification remains relatively strong?

Why has Ghana's FIFA ranking fallen so dramatically?

Why does a team capable of qualifying impressively for a World Cup repeatedly struggle to reproduce that standard at AFCON?

And why, despite occasional victories and the 2026 World Cup knockout appearance, are supporters becoming less emotionally invested?

Nobody should mistake this for a witch-hunt against the Ghana Football Association.

Nobody wants the FA to fail.

Why would we?

The Black Stars are our joy.

That is precisely why criticism is necessary.

If the FA leadership resigned tomorrow, Ghana would not magically win its next match.

A change at the top is not a footballing miracle.

But something has to give.

Because seven years is too long to describe everything as rebuilding.

At some point, rebuilding becomes an excuse for failing to establish a functioning structure.

At some point, patience becomes tolerance.

And at some point, tolerance becomes indifference.

That is the real danger.

Ghanaians can forgive failure.

We have done it before.

We watched Ghana lose AFCON finals.

We watched penalty shoot-outs break our hearts.

We watched quarter-final exits.

And yet we returned.

Because we believed.

Because we could see the fight.

Because we felt represented.

A team can lose and still be loved.

What destroys that relationship is not defeat alone.

It is detachment.

When supporters stop travelling.

Stop buying shirts.

Stop filling stadiums.

Stop arguing about line-ups.

Stop caring about who starts.

Stop caring about who wins.

That is when the national team has lost something more valuable than three points.

It has lost its people.

And perhaps Rosalind Amoh's question was therefore bigger than the empty streets around the Accra Sports Stadium.

Who killed the vim?

Nobody killed it in one night.

It has been drained gradually.

Through poor performances.

Through poor results.

Through broken expectations.

Through weakened relationships.

Through walls.

Through distance.

And through years of asking Ghanaians to believe while giving them increasingly little reason to do so.

Seven years after #BringBackTheLove, perhaps the GFA needs to stop asking Ghanaians to love the Black Stars.

Give them something to love.

Give them a team that fights.

Give them a team that competes.

Give them structure.

Give them accountability.

Give them access.

Give them results.

And give them back their national team.

Because the Black Stars do not belong to the Ghana Football Association.

They do not belong to the players.

They do not belong to the coaches.

They do not belong to administrators.

They belong to Ghana.

And if the GFA truly wants to #BringBackTheLove, it must understand that love is not something you demand from the people.

It is something you earn from them.

The greatest tragedy will not be missing AFCON 2027.

It will be the day Ghanaian streets remain quiet when the Black Stars come to town — and nobody asks why.

Give us something to love again.