Ghana also aimed at miraculously piping Egypt to her 4th World Cup and that did not happen as well. We look at the few players who could have done better in their club side that would have probably had an effect on our national team.
This is because the performance of a few individual players during the years would have flipped the script for Ghana football.
Andre Ayew
The West Ham player has been a pale shadow of himself from the year 2015 and the years before that. Andre Ayew’s performances have dwindled from the end of 2016 to the end of 2017. At the end of the 2015/2016 season Andre Ayew scored 12 Premier League goals with Swansea City.
The next season had Andre Ayew go towards a downward spiral ever since. He transferred to West Ham with a club record fee of £20.5 million in the summer of 2016. Ayew has not enjoyed the best of form at West Ham from 2016 to 2017.
In the 2017 calendar year Andre Ayew has scored 7 times out of 25 appearances in the English Premier League.
Andre Ayew as well started 2017 at the African Cup of Nations in Gabon where he racked up 2 goals by virtue of penalties. His performance with all due to respect was so awful he could convert any chance in open play.
Andre Ayew’s performance has not been the best following the level of performances he put up in previous African Cup of Nations and Swansea City two years ago.
Jordan Ayew
Jordan Ayew currently plays for his elder brother Andre’s former club Swansea City. He joined the team in 2017 after a lukewarm spell with Aston Villa.
Jordan Ayew joined Swansea City on 31st January,2017 and has managed to score only 2 goals out of 29 appearances for the club.
Jordan Ayew was stated to have the greatest potential among his brothers Andre and Rahim. Their father Abedi Pele attested to the fact. Jordan Ayew remains a potential at the age of 26 and the story still unfolds in the year 2017.
Ayew will need to make the cut in 2018 because the truth is that he is not growing any younger.
Jordan as a striker will need to improve his goal tally as the years go by.
The striker started his year at the African Cup of Nations as well where he netted 1 goal that brought him to tears in the celebration against DR Congo.
This came on the back of criticisms and bashing he had received from majority fans in Ghana. What got him crying was quite symbolic only because there were quite a number of fans who felt he needed to leave the Ghana Black Stars at the time.
That was as far back as January 2017 in Oyem and if everybody will be candid from then onwards whatever Jordan Ayew was crying about turned out to be that of a crocodile. It is December 2017 and the only goal he has scored for the Ghana Black Stars this year is that very goal in Oyem.
According to the potential Jordan Ayew exhibited as young boy, he is definitely better than one goal for the national team and 2 goals for the club side a whole calendar year of 2017
Daniel Amartey
The Leicester City defender has been a regular in defense for the Black Stars since the 2015 African Cup of Nations. On the other hand Daniel Amartey has struggled for minutes at Leicester City.
Amartey came in to join Leicester City on their way to winning the league title in the 2015/2016 season. The next season saw Leicester City struggle to mount any respectable title defense.
On the contrary, that saw Daniel Amartey as a center back find it difficult to replicate the sterling performance Kante put up at the heart of midfield this season. In January 2017, Leicester went in for Nigerian midfielder Wilfred Ndidi when Amartey was away at the African Cup of Nations.
Amartey returned to help Leicester continue their campaign in the Champions League. For some reason Amartey played all the games there despite the arrival of Ndidi and the dismissal of the manager that brought him to the team. Indeed, Claudio Ranieri was fired in between a Champions League two legged round of 16 tie against Sevilla.
Ranieri was in charge of the team 22nd February where Leicester City lost 2-1 only to be fired the next day for assistant Craig Shakespeare to take over. Shakespeare carried on for the rest of the season with Amartey suffering more neglect.
The next season started in an epic game against Arsenal where Daniel Amartey came on for Shinji Okazaki in the 72nd minute. That has been the one and only Premier League game Daniel Amartey has played in the 2017/2018 season.
Leicester have a new manager in Claude Puel and it does not seem Daniel Amartey will get a look in from the new man either. Amartey may or may not be the reason he does not get to play in the games for Leicester City at the moment. However he should have done better by finding himself out of the club in the summer.
Kwadwo Asamoah
The story of arguably the most versatile player ever to play for the Ghana Black Stars after Micheal Essien has been one sad one.
Asamoah has had a career plagued with injuries beyond measure and due to this has taken the bold decision to focus on racking up enough minutes with his club side Juventus.
Some section of Ghanaian fans and journalists have been clamoring for Kwadwo Asamoah to exit the club. This is because Ghanaians are craving to see the Kwadwo Asamoah bossed the left wing back position under Antonio Conte a few seasons back. That Asamoah will be always be preferred to the one who lives of playing time scraps with the Italian Giants today.
Kwadwo Asamoah failed to move away from Juventus in the summer and in truth things are getting better for him in the latter parts of this year. Kwadwo Asamoh in the ongoing 2017/2018 season has played 7 out of the 15 Serie A games played by Juventus.
Alex Sandro who was targeted by other clubs during the summer was maintained by Juventus. The clubs who therefore wanted to take advantage of the situation by acquiring Kwadwo Asamoah who now seems to be playing second fiddle to the Brazilian like Galatasaray as reported also failed to sign the Ghanaian.
Kwadwo Asamoah could have done pushed harder to ensure a move or displace Alex Sandro. Although the latter might be a tough ask Asamoah has not been injured since November,2016. This is to state injury cannot be an excuse for Kwadwo Asamoah to not achieve thee heights he has in the past.
Mubarak Wakaso
Wakaso has been to 3 teams this very year and the player who proved to be very talismanic in the 2013 and 2015 African Cup of Nations has faded off in the year 2017. Mubarak Wakaso’s performance at the 2017 African Cup of Nations was below par and it has not gone down to well at club level.
Wakaso started the year at Greek side Panathanaikos before being loaned to Granada. At the end of the season with Granada was signed by Deportivo Alaves. Mubarak Wakaso has struggled to settle in a team in a team for a while now with this year not being an exception.
The Alaves player is still trying to lock down a place with a club on permanent basis. The current contract with Alaves might be two years but a precedent has been set with Wakaso. Wakaso’s contract with Panathanaikos was a three year deal in 2016 only to terminated one year into the deal.
Mubarak Wakaso could have done better by just keeping his head in the game.
Razak Brimah
This very goal keeper’s tenure as no 1 for the Black Stars lasted as long as Avram Grant’s tenure as head coach of the team. Razak Brimah grew out of favor in the year 2016 with the fans of Ghana Black Stars as he put up a few pale performances in the games played by the team that year.
Brimah was permanent in post for Ghana in the 2017 AFCON and conceded a goal against Egypt which got him heavily criticized. Brimah went out of his way went on to respond to the criticisms. He did that with a few swear words which did not sit down with the Ghanaian populace.
Indeed Razak Brimah should have known and done better. Well he said he could have kept quiet but to quote him he decided to that because it was “OVER HIM”. This means he could not take the criticisms any longer.
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Ece_frontpage 07.09.2017Joe Dallesandro in The Streetwalker
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