In our lives, change is the only constant. However, drastic change may be harmful when it comes to football governance.
When I hear football politicians vowing to come and reform the way football is governed, I always take their words with a grain of salt. Despite their best efforts, especially those who have never worked in the current and modern style of how football should be managed are rarely able to comprehend the difficulties of reforming the governance of Ghana football, especially at this time of partisanship.
Real change in football administration requires brave leadership, administrators who are prepared to collaborate for the greater good, those looking to administer Ghana football who are familiar with the workings of the bureaucracy, and a little bit of luck as well.
This year is an election year for Ghana football. If you have ever witnessed a shift in a football management, you are aware of how difficult it can be for the Association members who find themselves in the thick of it. This is a brief reflection on long-term planning and the change in football governance.
“How does this relate to me?” you might be asking. Well, the Ghana Football Association members are the watchdogs and the direct internal publics because they are crucial to the association’s governance, especially during times of transition and extreme change.
At the moment, the current leadership of the football Association have steered the direction of our football and its direct members to a position that should be left to have enough time to grow and reap its benefits which will go a long way to enhance the development of our football.
A tiny step to help preserve the institutional memory of the Association. There is a specific action you may take right away, despite the fact that it is hard to predict how a new football government will handle its rupture with the past, whether by going forward or tearing everything apart. Although it won’t address the institutional problems, it could contribute to the development of a positive change snowball.
The Ghana Football Association’s institutional memory is made up of appointees who operate at various levels. There is little doubt that if the current leadership changes, there will be a significant shift in the narrative because when someone departs, the story departs with them.
You are more powerful than you are aware of. In reality, that could be the only option for football associations with inadequate institutional ability to leverage the lessons from prior strategies to go forward as football people.
The medium-term perspective of football policy is correlated with the tenure of the controlling football administrator. If a long-term national vision existed, the organizations’ policies ought to outline how a specific football leadership ought to carry out the long-term objectives.
In our football ecosystem, when people vote for a new President they’re also voting for a particular plan of development for the Association.
Ghana Football’s issue is that while development issues last longer than a leadership term, policies don’t. Weak institutional frameworks make the problems worse by making it possible to “break with the past” while also undoing any forward progress made in the past and changing the leadership.
Also, the majority of workers at FA consider themselves as politically neutral professionals, able to serve any regime t regardless of the alignment with their personal preferences. Plus, their time horizon is generally longer. However, administration changes bring the temptation to change everything, as a way to influence policy in the bureaucracy. Which only weakens the institutions even more.
Unfortunately, Ghana Football has lived the consequences of the lack of long-term planning. The prevalence of football government policies instead of the Association’s policies, which persist regardless of the ideology of the government in power.
Such a vision must be realized with non-ideological pragmatism for the greater benefit, and these reasons stated above is the reason why the current football Administration must be maintained.
Source: Abubakar Abdul Rahman/ Footballtimesgh
