Since someone sent me a rather nasty email criticizing me on the issue of the Ghana/Revs “news,” I figured I’d spoon feed the context to anyone who cares.
I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time trying to track down information as to those players the Revs may have looked at and/or may have targeted as part of the two trips the Revolution coaching staff have made to Ghana since late-January.
My first thought was to figure out exactly when Nicol and Mariner made their first scouting trip to Ghana, and what, if anything of note was happening in terms of major matches or tournaments taking place. As it turns out, the trip that Nicol and Mariner took coincided with matches being played as part of the African Youth Championship that featured Ghana’s U-20 National Team, a team that ultimately won the championship by beating Cameroon 2-0 on Sunday, February 1st.
Understanding that Nicol and Mariner have had their greatest success in developing young players, and recently grabbed both Kenny Mansally and Sainey Nyassi from the Gambia after seeing them play in the 2007 U-20 FIFA World Cup, matches such as those as part of he African Youth Championship fit the profile of the type of place that Nicol and Mariner may look for an emerging young talent.
I then checked a variety of Ghanian sources for any information as to Nicol and Mariner being in country, both of whom probably would have stuck out like sore thumbs, much like a number of other scouts reportedly in attendance. I checked pretty much every Ghanian newspaper I could find, the Ghana Press Agency, Ghanasoccernet.com, allghanasccer.com, as well as the incredibly active soccer forums on Ghanaweb.com. I was looking for any mention of the Revs, MLS, Nicol, Mariner… anything, and the only thing I came across was a posting in a Ghanaweb.com forum from someone who’d read that Nicol and Mariner were reportedly in the country scouting.
I then did a bit of research to figure out who was playing for the “Black Satellites” in this particular tournament, paying particular attention to those players who were out-of-contract, soon to be out-of-contract, or domestic players competing for Ghanian clubs. In particular, I looked for players that likely wouldn’t command a large transfer fee, weren’t currently being pursued by larger European clubs, and fit the profile of those players Nicol and Mariner were looking for: defenders and attackers.
That ultimately whittled the numbers down considerably, so I decided to start looking up background on these players, from news reports, blog entries, forum postings… anything that could give a sense as to how the player was doing, where he was playing, whether he was looking for a move, etc. I also looked for information on player valuations, potential suitors, doing pretty much the same kind of research that probably led to Revsnet making an “educated guess” that Emmanuel Clottey, for lack of a better way to describe it, fit the profile.
So pretty much every day for the past month and-a-half, I’ve been tracking news on these players, checking out the aforementioned sources for other news, and generally looking for anything and everything that might shed some light on who Nicol and Co. may be looking at. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to come across any information… not anywhere.
Then came word that Nicol had made a return trip to Ghana, and at a time that coincided with a number of Ghanian National Team games as part of the African Nations Championship. Much as I did for the African Youth Championship, I went through the roster looking for information on players who fit the profile of that type of player Nicol has gone on record as indicating he’s looking for, in particular, a central defender and a striker. Once again I made sure to look for players who were available, affordable, and might fit the profile of someone the Revs could use, and perhaps more to the point, a player the Revs had a legitimate shot at signing.
Much like the U-20 squad there were a number of players who stood out, so I started doing background work looking for details on these players, checked out any number of sources… and still, nothing. There was not one article, not one blog post, not one forum entry… nothing, on Nicol’s trip or any player linked to playing soccer in the U.S., this from a country that, by all rights, may be considered mad for the game.
At some point the names of Emmanuel Clottey, Eric Adeji, and Kofi Mensah came up in stories or postings on Revsnet and MLS-Rumors. So I started trying to run down these names in exactly the same way as I did for players I’d already looked up as related to the Ghana U-20 or Senior National Teams… and was as the case in all previous cases, nothing. There was some basic biographic information on each of these players, but there was nothing I could find on-line, from any source that gave any hint these players were being targeted, we’re looking to make a move, etc. If anything, the sense I got was that these were ordinary squad players who weren’t on anybody’s radar screen… players who wouldn’t exactly give the Revs reason to make not one, but two trips across the globe to check them out, especially when similarly gifted players might be found closer to home.
This got me thinking all the more. The Revs had made trips… two of them, halfway across the world to a country they’ve apparently never scouted not been to before to check out some players. In checking the local and national press in Ghana, as well as forums similar to ours where information can pop up on player moves, there was absolutely zero information on their trip, zero information on players linked to MLS… nothing at all.
So I decided to do what next made sense to me, send an email to the editors of Ghannasoccer.net to see if they’d heard anything about the rumors circulating here… whether they’d heard anything about the Revs being interested in a number of players.
You can actually see a copy of that email I sent earlier today:
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Now, if I worked for Ghanasoccer.net, I would have checked out these rumors. I would have contacted the clubs they played for, talked to colleagues who have their finger on the pulse of the game in the country, and would talk to the agents of these players if at all possible. Instead, the “editors” of the site decided to piece together a patch-work “story” from details in the links I sent them, have run it on line, and now are purporting this as news. In addition, MLS Rumors has taken this “story,” perverting it to suggest that these players have been “officially” signed.
So that’s really it people. I want to know who these players are and I’m doing my best to get that information, especially since the Revolution won’t confirm the identities of the players. I want to know who these players are because the Revs have had no outside players in on trial this off-season (which may be a first), lost some key players over the course of the off-season, and had some serious concerns about existing players including Twellman and Badilla… this and the fact that there appeared to be pretty much no information on these trips the Revs took, trips that weren’t just down the road to Honeydew Donuts mind you.
The 2009 season starts tomorrow and, perhaps more so than some other clubs, we have more questions than we do answers when it comes to the Revs, and any potential hopeful sign would be greatly appreciated at this point. Instead, we’re getting next to nothing, not because the Revs are deliberately working to keep us in the dark, but simple because this is the way they operate and make no apologies for doing so.
That’s just the way it is…