Every two or four years, Ghana’s football industrial complex sells the nation the same fantasy. Every two or four years, we buy it.
All too soon, Ghana’s fragile dream of making a real mark at the 2026 World Cup has ended in familiar, crashing disappointment.
But make no mistake: while the nation grieves, some very comfortable men at the Ghana Football Association, and their patrons in the corridors of power, have grown richer, hundreds of thousands of US dollars richer, for delivering a performance that can only be described as shambolic.
The dream is dashed again. The hope is crushed again. And already, somewhere in a boardroom, Ghana’s football mafia is cooking up its next profitable lie, because there is always a next tournament, and there is always a nation desperate for silverware it has not touched in a generation.
Not in Africa. Not on the world stage. We have mastered the art of the pipe dream, while the men who orchestrate the chase go home hundreds of thousands of dollars richer, tournament after tournament.
Let’s do the math. Ghana has won the Africa Cup of Nations four times — in 1963 and 1965, when only six nations competed, and in 1978 and 1982, when the field had grown to eight. That last trophy was lifted in 1982, when Ghana’s entire population stood at five to six million people. Today, half the country is 22 years old or younger. Do the arithmetic: more than 90 percent of Ghanaians alive today have never once seen the Black Stars lift a trophy.
And yet, because Ghana may be the best market in the world for selling a lie, every two or four years we assemble an average team of family and friends, put on a brave face, and declare to the world that this is finally our year.
Out of pure patriotism, Ghanaians rally behind the team every cycle, hoping that somehow, someway, the continent’s best sides will stumble badly enough to hand God’s most beloved country, Ghana, the cup it believes it is owed.
But the biggest lie the football establishment has ever sold us was the horror film we just watched: the humiliation of the 2026 World Cup.
Perhaps you’re thinking: but we drew with colonial England — surely that counts for something? Pause right there. The Gold Coast beat them outright, once upon a time.
Ghanaians are simply not angry enough at the never-ending joke the GFA keeps playing on us.
And please, spare us the tired line they trot out whenever the water reaches their necks, that the GFA is a “voluntary organisation.” If that’s true, why aren’t they raising their own money to cover the US$100,000 appearance fees and winning bonuses they so generously hand out?
Even now, as we lick our wounds, the next lie is already being written. The football people will sell it hot. And Ghanaian fans, ever faithful, will buy it, hot, like kenkey at the Osu night market.
All that awaits us is another broken heart at the next AFCON; that is, if we even manage to qualify.
But here’s something worth remembering: the synonym for corruption is FIFA.
Have a productive week.
Your football-heartbroken compatriot.
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