African Cup Of Nations Review - The Gold Coast of Football: Ghana 2008

by Joel Rookwood

I had always fancied going to the African Nations Cup, or the African Cup of Nations, or whatever it's called. Loads of football and cheap tickets, not to mention the unfamiliar stadiums, foreign cultures and warm sunshine - It was a combination which threatened to provide a welcome break at the latter stages of a cold British January. My home city of Liverpool might have just been granted status as European capital of Culture, but as with any Scouser worth his salt, my cultural education frequently extends beyond our continental borders. Ghana 2008 was too good an opportunity to miss.

It was my former flatmate who first mentioned travelling over for the tournament, an ambition that was principally aimed at supplementing the doctorate in African player migration patterns which he is currently undertaking. In the months leading up to the event however, he decided not to go.

Yet despite his unexplained change of heart, I was not to be perturbed. Africa is the continent I have seen the least of - this trip would be only the tenth nation I have visited on the continent. With the forthcoming World Cup in South Africa, I am confident that miniscule figure will grow in the coming years. And what better place to reacquaint myself with the continent than CAN 2008 in Ghana - the Gold Coast of African Football.

Flying solo on any inter-continental adventure is never ideal, but I was not afraid to settle for my own company for the eight days I planned on going for. Consequently, I bit the bullet in October and booked a return flight. As DiCaprio said on the film The Beach: "As for travelling alone, if that's the way it has to be..." I won't bother finishing the line. It's got one too many expletives for my liking, and anyway, I'm sure you get the gist.

In the weeks leading up to the event, I didn't really advertise my trip to those closest to me, partly because most of the lads round our way couldn't afford it, and partly because, the first rule of business is, 'don't talk about it until you've done it'. But during one cold night in Istanbul, in the hours leading up to Liverpool's horrific Champions League match against the buoyant Besiktas, I mentioned to a few of the lads that I was going. To my surprise, one of them expressed a firm interest in coming along.

I knew Faz well, and had been going to games with him about five years. He's well travelled, although by his own admission, he is not particularly well-versed in cultures of the developing world. Nevertheless, he decided Ghana was for him. There happened to be a computer at the end of the bar in the Irish Pub we were drinking in, and within ten minutes of him learning I was set to go, he put his money where his mouth was, and booked on the same flights. So all that talk of unaccompanied travelling was immediately rendered redundant.

After booking flights and sorting visas however, our pre-trip preparation was virtually non-existent. We had booked a room for the first two nights in the Coco Beach Resort, a hotel nestled behind what was supposed to be one of Ghana's finest beaches. We were due to arrive the night before the opening ceremony, although we had no match tickets, no transport arranged, and no accommodation for the remainder of the week. I had flicked through the group stage fixtures, and decided which ones appeared the most attractive, but that was the extent of the planning. Thankfully, one of our mates Andy (sorry, Andi) sensed that we were under-prepared, and had bought us a Ghana travel guide. Little did we know, but the book was set to save our arses on a few occasions over the course of the week.

Although much preparatory work had certainly been undertaken leading up to the commencement of the event, in truth the Ghanaians weren't quite prepared to host the tournament. It is unclear whether that was the function of inexperience, mismanagement or poorly timed or allocated funding, or a combination of the above. But in the weeks leading up to the competition, a number of professional and journalistic commentators were beginning to publicly discuss legitimate concerns over the arrangements and condition of ticketing, hotels and transportation. I wasn't too arsed by all the hype. Anyone who can get a European Cup final ticket out of Rick Parry's personal allocation, can sleep on the floor of a 24-hour bank, and get from Beijing to Liverpool - overland, was never going to be unduly concerned by a few organisational hitches at such a prestigious footballing event. In fact, if anything I was looking forward to the challenge.

When the departure date eventually arrived, there were a number of familiar faces milling around our flight, which seemed to contain half of the continent's press, European scouts and club representatives. The flight was due to take off from the dreaded terminal four of London's Heathrow Airport, where an inbound flight had crash-landed just two days earlier. The resultant backlog ensured there were heavy delays, both in and out of London. Nevertheless, we did eventually arrive in Accra, albeit very tired and very late.

Yet at least we had obtained a visa in advance, which was more than Colin Harvey had managed to achieve. The former Everton manager, who was one of the 'famous' faces on our flight, was sent from the line by angered officials, who refused to allow him to pass and instead merely threw a visa application form at him. The recently appointed Chief Scout of Bolton Wanderers clearly had no idea that most non-European countries require a pre-purchased visa as a condition of entry. Evidently he has much to learn about international travel. Evertonians would no doubt blame that on Heysel.

We arrived at the lavish accommodation, to find it depressingly full of arrogant Westerners, yet we put up with their egotism, as you tend to do when you are treated to five-star service from warm-hearted staff. Indeed, our naturally talkative manner saw us make friends with the staff almost as soon as we had arrived. After making the acquaintances of the management, we then casually explained that we did not have a ticket for the opening ceremony the following night and would like to purchase one each. Within an hour of returning to our room, a smiling Ghanaian knocked on the door, and presented us with a ticket each for the opening match. I felt like I was part of one of those adverts. If Carlsberg did room service....

The following day we got our first taste of African Nations football. The capital's premier football ground which staged the opening event looked refurbished rather than brand-new, although its condition was befitting of the tournament. As we got closer to the stadium, the area seemed to become increasingly populated by a seething mass of colour, noise and excitement. The lack of lighter skinned individuals in the vicinity did little to help us blend in, but the locals were incredibly friendly towards their foreign guests.

Inside the ground, the expectancy was almost tangible as the nearly exclusively Ghanian crowd swelled well-advance of kick-off. That was another great thing about this competition, nearly all the group stage matches were double headers (with the notable exception of the opening game). So for about £2 you got to see four teams play.

I'd passed on my Liverpool season ticket to a mate for the sole Liverpool game we were missing (which we missed thanks to Scudamore and co. at the Premier League who made a late decision to re-arrange the Aston Villa fixture from the weekend to the Monday night). I charged £30 - roughly face value - for the Aston Villa ticket. In the six nights we spent in Ghana we saw seven matches in three cities, for a combined total that didn't come close to matching the £30 mark… Only in Africa.

The opening ceremony was impressive, even if the daylight fireworks were a little redundant, and the PA system seemed to run off AA batteries. Doubtless, I failed to grasp the majority of the cultural references that were alluded to in the musical performance and dancing that accompanied it. But as a spectacle it was incredible. There must have been five hundred people partaking in the event, which preceded and succeeded a number of welcome speeches from various dignitaries. Predictably, the sheer weight of numbers left its mark on the pitch however, which received merely tokenistic protection from a thin line of covering.

It became evident when the covering was being dismantled after the ceremony, that no one had properly organised this process and not enough people were initially in place to remove the huge number of interconnecting parts in time for the start of the match. With kick off minutes away, and the players not even warmed up, extra 'volunteers' joined the proceedings from the lower tier of one of the stands. I'm sure the tournament organisers would insist that they were official tournament workers. Anyone with half a brain however, could see that it was an impromptu show of selfless solidarity from a hundred or so lucky supporters who were understandably keen to grace the pitch moments before Essien et al. were to do likewise. Regardless of the level of planning that went into the clearing of the playing surface however, the small army of workers did much to prevent a delayed kick off, even if the pitch was virtually unplayable by the time the referee first blew his whistle.

When the game did eventually get underway, the Ghanaian team looked devoid of match winners, short of ingenuity and lacking in belief. It was a performance that was to represent their tournament, as the pressure of hosting the event did little to urge the 'Black Stars' on to victory. Their opponents in the opening match, little fancied Guinea, by stark contrast, were far less experienced, but appeared less constrained by the weight of expectation. After the hosts had taken the lead from the penalty spot, the visitors notched a deserved equaliser, and enjoyed the balance of play in the second half. The brave attempts from the minnows to hold onto the draw, were disintegrated in final seconds of the game however, as the Ghanaians grabbed a late winner.

We were preparing to leave the stadium as the final goal went in, but were greeted by a surge of non-ticketed fans who had poured into the ground in the closing minutes of the game. The late winner did little to ease the panic. It was a miracle no one was killed in the melee that ensued. After scrambling out, the mood outside was one less of fear and more of jubilation, as the home crowd sighed collectively and took to the streets to party. It was a celebration that saw no violence but a number of unfortunate incidents, one of which claimed the life of an over-excited supporter. Over-awed by the passion of the Ghanaians, we headed back to the quiet relief provided by our resort.

The following day we took a taxi to the nation's second city of Sekondi. It was a four-hour trip which we maybe should have opted to do by plane, but my experiences of internal flights in Africa were not exactly positive. Every time I think of that plane I sat in on a flight from Mozambique to Zambia back in 2004, it sends shivers down the back of my spine. I still don't know how I survived that journey. With that memory firmly lodged in my mind, the prospect of some overland travel was far more appealing, even if the reality was far from simplistic.

The car we travelled in looked like it had never been near a road, and the surfaces it was required to navigate made the completion of our journey in time for kick-off of the evening's first match even less probable. Agonisingly, we got to within ten miles of the city, before the car and its driver gave up. It was twenty minutes until kick-off. Almost immediately however, we managed to flag down a car heading in the opposite direction and convince its driver to spin around and take us to the ground. When he dropped us off there was the customary 'confusion' over the agreed price, which predictably we won. We handsomely rewarded the driver with compensation for the inconvenience, which he somehow considered inadequate. Unconcerned by his exploitative attempts, we shook our heads and disappeared towards the stadium.

We saw two games that evening, including the eagerly awaited clash between Ivory Coast and Nigeria followed by the slightly less glamorous tie between Mali and Benin. To rub salt into the wound, Liverpool's once popular but now (crap and therefore) former midfielder Momo Sissoko did not even get onto the pitch. The only notable African player in our squad to be at the tournament, and he didn't even have decency to get picked for one of the worst national teams in the competition. At the FA Cup final in 2006 in Cardiff, an enormous Mali banner was revealed by a Liverpool fan which simply read 'Momo is boss'. How times have changed for the now Juventus midfielder. The first game however proved a decent match, and was largely well organised short of the power-cut which twice threatened proceedings. We would have enjoyed the freedom to drink alcohol whilst watching the game, if the Ghanaian Guinness didn't taste like piss. The latter game was fairly boring, and I can't be arsed looking up who the winners were.

After leaving the stadium following the second game, we were approached by a number of taxi drivers who offered us a lift into town. One of which was an Accra-born man named Justice. We liked the look of this lad straight away, and so arranged a three-day itinerary with him, whereby he would immediately transport us to a nearby hotel, wait overnight, take us to Kumasi the following day for the next two matches, then take us back to Accra the day after that. A delighted Justice agreed, of course. His attempt at securing a 5km fare, ended up at being closer to 800km when we finally parted company three days later.

Thanks to Andy's book, we located, phoned and made reservations for that night at a hotel in the break between the two games. With half the fans in the ground having taken to praying to Allah in the break, in any space they could find, we had little else to do. The hotel we found had elements of the ridiculous about it, but it was cheap as chips, and served its purposes for the five hours we spent there.

Our next stop involved a trip inland to Kumasi. Away from the relatively well developed coastline, the roads got gradually more precarious as the journey inland progressed. To break the trip up, we stopped a number of times at various markets to pick up souvenirs. The locals did not quite seem used to having Westerners in their townships, but were always more welcoming than inhospitable. We decided to reward Justice with a few pints when we arrived at Kumasi, which did very little for his energy levels, so we bought him a good meal to balance it out, and then bought him a ticket in the VIP section of the ground to accompany us for the evening. Egypt took on Cameroon in the first game, which turned out to be a mock-up of the final three weeks later, before Zambia played the mighty Sudan. The holders and record winners Egypt looked in unforgiving mood that day, winning the game 4-2. I'm not too sure who won the other game, probably Zambia - but what do I remember is this - the Sudanese are crap at footy.

The following day it was Tumale's turn to host matches, but this proved one step too far. It was a considerable distance up to the most northerly city involved in the tournament, and so we chose instead to have a 'day off', and head back to the coast. Of course, we did not go directly back to the capital. We, or rather I, decided we should go via Togo, as you do.

I'm not really obsessive about seeing every country on the planet, but if there's one near-by, and I'm at a loose end, I tend to try and cross an international border for a bit of exploration. Just to see if I could find Benitez a player who has a better haircut than Andriy Voronin, can walk faster than Dirk Kuyt can run, can head the ball better than Peter Crouch, and in short, deserves to play alongside the mighty Fernando Torres at Liverpool. It turns out Togo have produced such player, but Arsenal's Wenger got in there first, as he tends to do.

Not only were we denied the opportunity to take a quality striker back to Liverpool, we weren't even granted access to the country. It appears not having a visa prevents you from travelling between the two countries unless you're Togolese or Ghanaian. And to think, I laughed at Colin Harvey for making a similar mistake only a week ago. I tend to assume I can bend the rules however, and occasionally I'm reminded in no uncertain terms that this isn't always the case. So with the road border completely non-receptive, despite (unconfirmed) offers of bribery, it appeared we were destined to be unsuccessful. But I then discovered that the border also runs down the beach, which was considerably less patrolled. Unfortunately, given that I was the only white man on the beach, I was spotted crossing the invisible line into Togo. I was told to return to Ghana - and I decided, against my better judgement, to comply.

We headed back to the capital (of Ghana) in time for the evening's matches and watched South Africa scrape a 1-1 draw with Angola, sunk a couple of bevies, and hit the sack. We spent the following day on the ale and on the beach, just wishing we could be back in work in rainy Liverpool. As the sun pelted onto our backs however, we lay back and did what we could to put up with the situation.

Without complaining we then went to our sixth and seventh matches of the week, starting with Guinea against Morocco, before watching the hosts play Namibia. To the dismay of my companion, we left the latter game at half time - just so we could arrive at the airport three hours early for our flight home. Not one of the better decisions I made during the trip, but how was I to know the roads would be dead and the airport was only five miles from the stadium? I could simply not afford to risk missing the 23:00 flight back to the UK, as I was delivering a lecture at my university in Liverpool at 11:00 the following morning. At 10:53, I came strolling into my Childwall office, as if I had never been away. By that time, somewhat deprived of sleep, Ghana began to seem like a surreal dream. Just in case it was all a dream, it's probably best if I go to CAN 2010 in Angola - overland probably. And if I'm going all that way I might as well hang around Southern Africa to see Javier Mascherano captain the mighty Argentina to World Cup glory in July. I'm beginning to like this international football lark.

Hotels in Ghana

Novotel Accra City Centre

Joel Rookwood

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