There was a period in Ghanaian football when some talents seemed to defy football logic. They were not merely good footballers.
They were artists.
And many of them came from West Africa Football Academy (WAFA).
At WAFA, football was played with a particular rhythm: the ball moved quickly, feet seemed lighter, and young men who had barely announced themselves to the country played as though they had been together for decades.
Gideon Waja. Majeed Ashimeru. Richard Danso. Samuel Tetteh. Umar Bashir. Martin Antwi. Richmond Lamptey. Prince Ampem. Emmanuel Boateng. It is a tall list.
Different players. Different personalities. Different journeys.
But somehow, the same football language.
Intricate passing. Delicious touches. Movement without the ball. Courage to receive under pressure. A willingness to play football rather than merely survive it.
For a while, Sogakope became one of the most fascinating places in Ghanaian football.
WAFA’s home was not simply a football ground.
It was a factory.
And the factory kept producing talent with incredible substance.
In October 2017, WAFA completed a remarkable 44-match unbeaten run at home after drawing 1-1 with Medeama. Their style was already recognisable: movement, passing and an insistence on playing their way out of trouble.
For six consecutive seasons, they were simply irrepressible, beating at least an opponent four or more goals.
2015
Wafa 4-1 Hasaacas
2016
Wafa 5 – 0 Hasaacas
2017
Wafa 5-0 Hearts
2018
Wafa 5 – 0 Dreams
2020
Wafa 6 – 1 AshGold.
2021
WAFA 5-1 Liberty Professionals
Again and again, the Academy Boys turned Sogakope into a theatre.
When they dismantled Liberty Professionals 5-0, on January 31, 2021, this young kid, Augustine Boakye among the scorers.
It was almost as if the place had its own footballing DNA. And somewhere inside that DNA was a boy from Bompata, a suburb of Ghana’s Ashanti region.
His name was Augustine Boakye. When he came through this factory in Sogakope, there was something curious about him. He did not look like a footballer who wanted to merely participate in a game.
He wanted to interfere with it. Give him the ball and he wanted to turn. Put a defender in front of him and he wanted to run at him. Give him a teammate in space and he could find him.
There was mischief in his football. The kind that makes spectators lean forward before anything has actually happened. Ask David Ocloo, former Liberty manager. Ask George Amoako former Liberty captain, and may be Abraham Wayo for the script of that never-to-be-forgotten afternoon.
He tore them apart in a similar fashion football demigod Lionel Messi did to Manchester United that got Michael Carrick depressed in that 2009 Champions League final.
By the end of the 2020/21 Ghana Premier League season, the curiosity had become evidence.
Boakye played 29 matches, scored nine goals, provided 13 assists and won seven Man of the Match awards. Those numbers earned him a place among the nominees for the Ghana Premier League Player of the Season award.
Nine goals. Thirteen assists. Seven individual awards. For a 20-year-old.
But numbers, on their own, do not tell the full story.
They cannot tell you about the first touch that gets neutrals of their feet with gaping mouths screaming ‘wow’ unison.
They cannot tell you about the little pause before the acceleration that gets fans anticipating what is about to happen.
They cannot tell you about the defender who thinks he has closed the door, only to discover that Boakye has already found another entrance.
That was the attraction. He was not simply productive. He was such a talent that one could watch all day without blinking.
And that is a rare quality. Then he disappeared just like many of those with incredible cloth in a fabric of football dynasty.
Football has a strange way of hiding its treasures. Sometimes distance does it. Sometimes timing.
Sometimes a player’s development happens quietly, far from the noise that surrounds the biggest names. Boakye left Ghana and began another education in Europe.
Austria became his next classroom.
Wolfsberger became the place where the boy from WAFA had to learn another version of football.
The pitches were different. The opponents were different. The demands were different. The game was less forgiving. But, he kept moving.
At Wolfsberger, he gradually became more than the exciting Ghanaian prospect. He became a professional footballer. He learned to survive without the ball. To make decisions faster.
To understand spaces differently.
To play against defenders who had no interest in being entertained. And eventually, France came calling.
Saint-Étienne.
A club whose name carries history in French football. A club where expectations are not whispered.
Boakye, now 25, arrived in July 2024, having established himself in Austria. He had made 43 league appearances for Wolfsberger, scoring 13 goals and providing nine assists.
The journey had moved from Sogakope to Wolfsberg. Then from Wolfsberg to Saint-Étienne.
The boy was becoming the footballer. He was a man! France did not come easy
There is a temptation, when telling football stories, to make every journey look inevitable.
It rarely is.
Boakye’s first season in France was about adjustment. Last season was about influence.
He played 31 Ligue 2 matches for Saint-Étienne, scoring five goals and providing nine assists.
Then came this season. And suddenly, something began to happen. The numbers started making noise.
Seven league appearances.
Seven starts.
Four goals.
Three assists.
Seven goal involvements.
Against Metz on 19 September, Boakye scored one and assisted another in Saint-Étienne’s 2-2 draw. He had scored in four consecutive league appearances.
This is the version of Boakye Ghana is now beginning to see.
Not the promising 20-year-old at WAFA.
Not simply the Ghanaian abroad.
But a 25-year-old attacking player who has accumulated several seasons of European football and appears to be entering one of the most productive periods of his career.
Ghana has been waiting. The country knows his name. But it has barely seen him.
Ghanaian football fans and journalists may have watched his career through statistics, clips and reports from Europe. They have heard about the goals. They have heard about the assists.
They have heard about Saint-Étienne. But they have not yet had enough time with him.
Enough minutes. Enough touches. Enough moments.
The Black Stars came close to giving him that opportunity at the 2026 World Cup.
Boakye was named in Carlos Queiroz’s squad for the tournament, but the opportunity never quite arrived on the pitch.
The ball screamed for him when Croatia were a tough nut to crack. Carlos Queiroz never heard.
It whispered when Colombia were running away with ease, but the Portuguese had other ideas, leaving the young man on the edge of the story.
There’s always that butterfly of ‘if’, but this moment feels different.
With an AFCON qualifying campaign on the horizon. Côte d’Ivoire and The Gambia to look forward to.
Then there is a new beginning under Queiroz.
The timing could not be more interesting.
Boakye is no longer arriving as an unknown teenager.
He arrives with a body of work. And, importantly, he arrives at a time when Ghana’s attack has been forced to adjust.
Mohammed Kudus withdrew from the squad after recovering from injury, Antoine Semenyo and Jordan Ayew out plus many others affected by fitness and availability issues. Queiroz has consequently had to make additions to his squad.
Is this Boakye’s time?
Ghana’s 2027 AFCON qualifying campaign begins in Bouaké against Côte d’Ivoire on Thursday, 24 September. Bouaké is not a City many Ghanaians would want to be reminded of.
In 1984, when Ghana line-up as defending champions of the AFCON, the team had what many described as disastrous showing on the continental, forcing the team to be disbanded for what many claim was lack of commitment to the national cause.
It was named the ‘Bouaké debacle.’ Quieroz may want to avoid a repeat of history not just against Boauké, but against a nation that has denied Ghana an AFCON title in the last 34 years, before returning home to face The Gambia five days later at the Accra stadium.
Côte d’Ivoire beat Ghana in 1992 to win its first AFCON title and defeated Ghana in 2015 to win their second title. Both victories were secured after a marathon shootout. The man who denied Ghana an AFCON gold medal in 2015, Herve Renard, leads to Elephants again.
It is not an ordinary beginning.
Côte d’Ivoire are one of Africa’s established football powers. AFCON champions two years ago.
And Hervé Renard is beginning a new cycle with the Elephants, having introduced eight new players into his squad.
Ghana, meanwhile, is beginning its own chapter. Queiroz has inherited a group containing established names and emerging players. A group that failed to qualify for this tournament in 2025, ending Ghana’s 20 consecutive years of participating in the competition.
Ghana cannot afford another slow start. That makes this AFCON qualifying window significant. Players must step up, but who should Quieroz call on?
Does Ghana have the attacking talent?
They have them. The question is what kind of attacker Queiroz wants.
And that is where Boakye becomes fascinating.
Call him an attacking midfielder and you are not wrong. But you are not entirely right either.
This football academian is that left-footed attacker who can operate across the frontline. He can come inside. He can start wide. He can carry the ball. He can combine.
He can create. And, he can score.
His recent Saint-Étienne numbers make the point better than adjectives ever could: four goals and three assists in seven Ligue 2 appearances this season.
But there is another quality that cannot be measured so easily. Freedom.
Boakye likes to play. He likes to receive. He likes to face people. He likes the uncertainty of one-versus-one situations.
And he has something Ghana have always loved in their best attacking players: the instinct to make something happen when nothing appears to be happening.
Think of Kudus. Quincy Owusu Abeyie. Kevin Prince Boateng. Kwadwo Asamoah…
That is the kind of footballer spectators remember.
Boakye did not emerge from nowhere. He came through a football culture that valued the ball. The same academy that produced Waja, Ashimeru, Tetteh, Annan, Lamptey, Ampem and others also produced him.
And the numbers from his breakthrough season confirm that he was not merely passing through.
He belonged.
When WAFA beat Liberty Professionals 5-0 in January 2021, Boakye scored and also assisted Sampson Agyapong.
When the Ghana Premier League Player of the Season nominations were announced months later, his nine goals, 13 assists and seven Man of the Match awards were impossible to overlook.
That was the player Sogakope knew. Europe has since polished him. But somewhere inside him, that WAFA player remains.
The boy who sees the defender. The space behind him. The teammate arriving. And lays the ball.
There is a temptation to make a player’s international debut into a referendum on his entire career.
It should not be. International football is its own beast. The spaces are different. The tempo is different. The pressure is different.
A player can dominate a domestic league and struggle to reproduce it internationally. So Boakye does not need to arrive in Bouaké and become Ghana’s saviour.
He simply needs an opportunity to begin.
A touch. A run. A pass. A shot. A moment.
Perhaps that is all Ghanaian supporters are asking for.
Because for years, they have heard about Augustine Boakye.
Now they want to see him. Not on a statistical website.
Not through a highlight reel from France. They want to see him in black and white (in Ghanaian parlance).
They want to see whether the player who enchanted Sogakope can carry that magic into the Black Stars. He is no longer waiting
The talent that once needed to announce itself in Sogakope is now producing goals in Saint-Étienne.
The question is no longer whether Europe has seen him.
Europe has.
The question is whether Ghana has.
Perhaps that is what makes this moment so compelling. The country has spent years waiting for the next great attacking talent to announce himself. Maybe he already did. Maybe we simply were not close enough to hear it.
Augustine Boakye is no longer waiting for permission.
He is knocking.
And somewhere between Bouaké and Accra, Ghana may finally open the door.
DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.
Source link
