Winning Magic For Queens

The newly-appointed caretaker coach of the senior women’s football team, Coach Abdul Gamel Mumuni, says his top priority is to get the team back to their scoring form. Coach Mumuni, head of the women’s Under-20 side, together with his assistant, Ben Fokuo, was asked to take over the Queens job temporarily after Coach Isaac Paha and his two assistants, Dan Owusu and Dora Zutah, were removed from their job last Friday. The immediate assignments for Coach Gamel will be Saturday’s second leg of the African Women’s Championship (AWC) against Cote d’Ivoire at the Ohene Djan Stadium and the crunch Olympic qualifying encounter against Nigeria in Abuja on March 22.

Coach Gamel has already identified the areas he needs to work on as a matter of urgency to get the desired results. Reacting to his appointment, Coach Mumuni said the team boasts of quality players but had failed to be convincing in their wins because they had to score at the right time. “As the man in charge of the Princesses, I’ve had a close working relationship with the Queens so we won’t have problems getting to work straight away. The team is not as bad as their performance has sought to indicate. The main area is getting the goals at the right time,” he told the Graphic Sports. He also intends to use the match against the Ivorians as a springboard to prepare for the Olympic qualifier against Nigeria, and it was therefore important they got very good results. “Apart from going for the points which will secure us the ticket to the 2008 edition of the AWC, we have very little time to prepare for the Nigeria game, so that will also be an exercise towards that assignment. Whichever way, we need to get good results and that will be our game plan for tomorrow,” he emphasised. Though the playing body is tight-lipped for the changes in camp, sources close to the team say they remain in high spirits and are poised for a win against Cote d’Ivoire. “We all want the best for the team, and so if the changes in the technical direction will bring better results, why not?” a source told the Graphic Sports. Fred Crentsil, an Executive Committee member of the Ghana Football Association (GFA) and Chairman of the Black Queens management committee has described the change as ‘necessary and in the best interest’ of the team.

He said the decision was arrived at after a careful assessment of the performance of the team, as well as the results in the past two years Coach Paha and his team had been in charge. He said the removed technical team were given every chance to prove their worth, but unfortunately the desired results were not recorded, and with the GFA determined to retain the Queens’ pedigree as the second best in Africa, it had no choice but to bring on fresh ideas.

Coach Paha could not be reached for his reaction. However, his departure from the Queens set-up was an emotional one as the news to ask him and his assistants to step aside was conveyed to them while in camp. They took charge in March 2006 during which time he led the team to qualify for the 2006 AWC held in Warri, Nigeria, where they finished second to the hosts. That position earned them a ticket to the 2007 Women’s World Cup (WWC) held in China, but what was to be a memorable third appearance for the Queens turned out to be a disastrous outing, with the Ghanaians bowing out in the first round with very humiliating results.