Desailly’s advice great, but worth disregarding!

Ghanaian-born former captain of France, Marcel Desailly, is a big personality in world football such that when he speaks people who matter listen with rapt attention.

It is the reason new Black Stars coach, Avram Grant, will hardly dismiss any suggestions he makes to him in the course of the expectedly challenging job, starting with the 2015 AFCON.

But we think Grant may have to be cautious in imbibing Desailly’s brutally frank advice to him not to invite a player such as Sulley Muntari.

As captured by our lead story today, Desailly minced no words when he said Grant should forget about Muntari and others if he really wanted to succeed with the Black Stars.

Of course, Desailly, who is also interested in handling the Stars in future, has followed the fortunes or misfortunes of the team for sometime now and must have been convinced that Muntari and some others (he did not name) remain the Stars’ Achilles’ heel.

In fact, there is no denying the fact that Muntari is one of the outstanding players in the Stars set-up any day, but that his continuous misconduct or bad-boyism remains legendary cannot be discounted.

His infamous fracas with an executive member of the Ghana FA at the 2014 Brazil World Cup during which the Stars sold their worst performance in three mundial appearances, is as historic as his failure to submit to requests made on him by the Presidential Commission of Inquiry set up in the aftermath of the episodic World Cup.

For us, it is the highest stage of player misconduct yet for Muntari to keep the Presidential Commission in perpetual incommunicado by failing to answer the call to explain his side of the story in the saga of Brazil.

In spite of that, we will be the last people to suggest to Grant that Muntari should be thrown out of the team altogether.

In fact, K.P. Boateng is another in the growing band of Stars’ bad boys who Grant is being alerted to treat at arm’s length if he wants to achieve anything with the Stars during his tenure.

But we think all these errant players and others who are yet to show their true colours in the team only need a big manager and counsellor in the frame of Avram Grant to get them sobered for the Stars to get going.

Granted, Grant, like any manager, will be expecting instant results with the Stars and may not want to entertain indisciplined players who are likely to retard his progress. 

But is it not also the job of a coach worth his salt to turn around some of the so-called gifted bad boys and use them to achieve the results that he will badly need?

After all, other football managers are handling these same Muntaris and K.P. Boatengs in their various clubs in Europe, and we believe Grant has the stature and managerial acumen to do same with the Stars.

Indeed, we supported the hiring of an expatriate coach rather than a local one this time around because of such tendencies of ego-trip by some of these players, which we believe, could best be dealt with by a renowned and result-oriented manager as Avram Grant.

So, we think Grant should not be constrained. Let us give him the free hand and latitude to give the Stars a fresh start by indulging all the players, including the so-called wayward ones.