Finally, the news of Chris Hughton climbing up as Black Stars coach has been confirmed. The worst kept secret in Ghana football is out of the bag. The coach’s seat at any of this country’s stadia where the Black Stars play, is one of the most sought after yet, one of the most insecure positions in African football. On Sunday, the Ghanaian social media space was awash with tweets and Facebook posts of the Irish man taking up a young but talented Ghana team. There wasn’t the usual pomp that comes with the announcement of a new coach as we have come to know in recent years. This was simply done on Twitter by the FA’s official handles.
It has been 72 days since the Black Stars last had a coach. Quite a long time for the national team to be without a coach but the prolonged nature of the search as is usually the case was probably because the FA was sifting through tons and tons of application letters worldwide. It also helped that there were no games to be played within this period. So why Chris Hughton? And why now?
Just after the Africa Cup of Nations last year where Ghana failed miserably, there was a huge conversation around who the next Black Stars coach will be. Milo was shown the exit door, Hughton came, applied for the job, did not get it, job was handed to Otto Addo and Hughton who really wanted the national team job had to settle for a mere technical advisor role where your voice is never heard – where you lead the school’s assembly from the back rather than the front. A job not many would like. In that role, he followed the team to many games, scouted players, provided sound technical advice that evidently fell on deaf ears and had a big hand in cajoling some players of Ghanaian descent out there to play for the motherland. So after the resignation of Otto Addo, it was only right that Hughton got the job. The man who always looked like the next person to take the seat in this spinning room of musical chairs.
Chris was born in Essex, a county in the East of England to a Ghanaian father and an Irish mother. He lived most of his life in Great Britain and played the majority of his football there. In a career that spanned 16 years, he played out much of it at White Hart Lane. His era at Tottenham Hotspur marked a purple patch in the club’s fortunes. He helped them win back-to-back FA Cup titles in 1981 and 1982. That team carried the heart and soul of the club. Hughton was among an array of stars that shone for the club in that period. There, he was with Glen Hoddle, Garth Crooks and the Argentine duo of Osvaldo Ardiles and Ricky Villa. On the international scene, he played 53 times for the Republic of Ireland. In 1993, he hung up his boots after a short stint with Brentford that was blighted by injuries.
After making a name for himself on the pitch, Hughton went on the side lines. He got on the coaching staff at Tottenham where he worked with some notable names like Gerry Francis, George Graham, Glen Hoddle, Jacques Santini and Marin Jol. He has managed at Newcastle, Spurs, Birmingham City, Norwich City, Brighton and Hove Albion and Nottingham Forest.
Hughton’s win percentage as a coach does not help his course albeit having all that level of experience in the bag. He has a meagre win rate of 39% as manager. However, it will be wrong to judge the man solely based on that. There are managers who are just not cut out for the rigorous nature of club football and Hughton may be one of such. Remember the Italy side of 1982, their coach was Enzo Bearzot whose first proper job with a senior team as a coach was at Serie C side Prato before he took on the Italy job in 1975. Who was Hugo Broos before Cameroon 2017? And how about the coach of the reigning World Champions, Argentina? Lionel Scaloni had been an assistant at Sevilla, an assistant with the national team, went on to take up the under-20 team before he was handed the job and now here they are.
The argument here is that this may not be Ghana’s fate but it is enough evidence to show that in international football the unfancied man could come in and deliver success in the most improbable way.
Hughton should be a good choice for Ghana. He has had ample time (a year) for his dress rehearsal. He was with the team at the hostile Moshood Abiola stadium in Abuja where Ghana qualified for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, in Abu Dhabi where the Stars downed Switzerland and was with them at the World Cup when they needed one point from a final game against Uruguay and failed. He has had time to look at the team carefully to know what he wants to do with it. Will there still be a conundrum of where Kudus or Inaki’s best position is? Will he keep Baba Rahman on the left side of defence? Does he recall Jeffery Schlupp into the fold? Will he go with Tariq Lamptey or Alidu Seidu at right back? And now that Nketiah is in the form of his life, will he go back to wheedle him one last time to join his team? All of these questions will linger on his mind and on the minds of many Ghanaian football fans.
The World Cup exposed the many cracks in the Black Stars team – cracks that cannot be papered over anymore. Hughton spent 5 years at Brighton. His Brighton side was built on grit and resilience and players who were willing to die for him on the pitch – Anthony Knockaert, Florin Andone, Lewis Dunk, Davy Propper, Solly March and others. If he is able to replicate that here, that will be remarkable.
His first task will be an AFCON qualifier in March against Angola. The qualifier will not matter too much. The trophy next year will. It will be 42 years since Ghana last won the trophy by the time the next AFCON comes around and like Farmers Boggis, Bunce and Bean from Roald Dahl’s classic novel, Fantastic Mr Fox, we are all still waiting.
