The way forward for Hearts of Oak

Sports characteristics of Sunday, December 13, 2020

Source: 3 News

2020-12-13

Change is essential for any good team to achieve sustained success. The ability to identify the right time to rebuild, revise, or simply modify some aspects of a team distinguishes good teams from great teams. Accra Hearts of Oak is a great team.

Together with Asante Kotoko, they have maintained a duopoly over Ghanaian and sometimes continental football for much of their history. However, Hearts of Oak’s strength in local football has weakened as the Phobians have not won the Ghana Premier League for 11 years and, after a poor start to this campaign, the drought could continue for another season.

There are many factors that have contributed to Heart’s recent inability to win the league title, but an unwillingness to accept the change is definitely not one of them. In fact, Hearts of Oak has been far too keen to pursue change at the slightest hint of difficulty and that has destroyed the possibility of any kind of stability in the club.

This change often manifests itself in the form of a new manager, the hierarchy at Hearts of Oak has not been shy about taking down the ax hard and fast when the results are even slightly disappointing.

Interestingly, in the early 2000s, this model was moderately successful. Between 2000 and 2009, Hearts of Oak had 11 different coaches and was able to win 6 Ghana Premier League titles, as well as an FA Cup and various continental trophies.

Most Hearts of Oak coaches haven’t been able to keep their jobs for more than a full season, but that didn’t stop Hearts from dominating the league in the early 2000s. A key reason was the concentration of talent in the two. big clubs at the time, which means that most of the other teams in the league could not cope with the individual quality of the players from these clubs. The uneven playing field allowed Hearts to dominate even though things were not particularly stable off the field.

However, this system was unsustainable, as other clubs began to catch up and local talent began to spread more evenly throughout the league. The hearts were examined more regularly. In the 2009/10 season, the campaign after they won their last GPL title, Hearts, fell to third place, behind Ashanti Gold and Adana Stars.

In the next season, the trend continued when the Phobians finished in fifth place, 14 points behind eventual winner Berekum Chelsea. These seasons weren’t a disaster by any means, but the consistent failure to get their hands on the grand prize at the end of the seasons meant that the management merry-go-round accelerated even further at Hearts.
From the 2009/10 season to the start of the current campaign, Phobians had gone through a staggering 16 coaches. The weight of expectation surrounding the club caused inaction to be seen as incompetence on the part of the fans and, in order to refrain from blaming, club executives constantly hung up on their coaches by not giving them enough time to build. any kind of equipment. .

Hearts of Oak never finished below fifth in the span between its last title win, and yet no coach was supported to try to build on momentum from one season and take the next step the next. Some coaches in this time frame were obviously out of their league and deserved firing, but that says more about the officials they hire than the coaches themselves.

Terrible planning meant that coaching appointments were made without due diligence. It is much easier to stick with a coach in tough times when through extensive discussions and effective research the club is confident that they are qualified and their vision aligns with that of the team. When these things are not done, it is easy to abandon a project as soon as it hits a bump in the road and many of the managers found out the hard way.

The firing of Kim Grant last season was as funny as it was impractical. Grant had managed the team in the Normalization Committee special competition as well as some preseason friendlies and was trying to get the team to play his own way, but all that time was wasted as he failed to make it through his first game. To be fair, it was a loss, but it was just one game and the decision was excessively tough for Grant and had negative consequences for Hearts, who ranked ninth at the end of that truncated season.

Another debacle involving Portuguese coach Manuel Vaz Pinto meant that Edward Nii Odoom took over the reins of this Hearts team going into the current season and there was a bit of optimism in the hand team awaiting the end of the trophy drought. . Hearts wasted in their first game and they went with a 2-2 Ashanti Gold draw, a game in which they took the lead twice. Their next game, a trip to the Inter Allies ended in a 1-0 loss for Hearts and the next day Hearts of Oak’s coaching position was vacant again. After only two games, TWO games.

It’s almost as if they told club executives that there is a perfect coach, a silver bullet who can solve Hearts of Oak’s problems with a wave of his hand and if Heart fires enough coaches, he will run into him. A strange strategy, but according to what we have seen it could well be the Hearts of Oak strategy.

The return of Kosta Papi is not something that excites me very much. It feels like a desperate attempt to regain a standard that has been long lost. Daddy? he has passed his peak and has been very disappointing since leaving Hearts of Oak in 2009. He has spent seasons at 6 different clubs without achieving much in the 11 years he has been away from Ghana and is likely to disappoint him once. again. Can hearts get the most out of this situation using Daddy? as an interim measure and looking for a longer-term option to join the team.

The concept of change is by no means lost in this current Hearts of Oak regimen. The numbers are staggering, and turnover is simply not sustainable for any kind of success. The club hierarchy needs to put a plan in place and hire a coach who believes they can move the team forward in the long run and then have faith in that coach. Most teams are successful in embracing change, Accra Hearts of Oak needs to take a break from change and welcome stability to start progressing.