<\/p>\n
A neglected pitch<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt was a difficult game,\u201d Sir Alex Ferguson, a former manager of English Premier League club, Manchester United, noted.<\/p>\n Looking visibly disappointed, he added, \u201cthe pitch was poor.\u201d A pantheon, whose nous for this game is only matched by their own intellect, an intellect the football industry will forever adore could not mastermind victories on pitches he deemed \u201cpoor\u201d.<\/p>\n Imagine those pitches deemed unplayable and compare that to the Accra or Baba Yara stadia \u2013 two facilities considered the best pitches in Ghana in the top-flight. Just imagine that. If these God-forsaken facilities are the \u2018quality pitches\u2019 available for professional players, think of the amateur footballer in a community; a community like Nima \u2014 It is worse. To be charitable, it is an eyesore. A town with a population of over 600,000 people has just two football pitches \u2013 Kanda Cluster of Schools Park and the Kawokudi Park \u2013 and both are under massive pressure with a plethora of teams and schools training on it for exercise or competitions despite having talents abound.<\/p>\n The production chain served the country with top players who made their mark in the country, on the continent, and global at large.<\/p>\n Mohammed Ahmed \u2018Polo\u2019, described as the player who \u201cheld the key to the tightest of defences,\u201d by Nii Odai Laryea in Polo\u2019s book dubbed \u201cThe Magnificent,\u201d became the most prominent star this community ever produced. \u201cWe had many parks,\u201d Polo says. \u201cWe had many parks to the extent every area had a team and we played inter-community matches,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n That\u2019s where Polo was discovered, and many others were in line to be mined to continue the trajectory of the Nima story, but there was a challenge. \u201cPeople were building houses and putting up other structures [in the parks football was played],\u201d the Dribbling Magician recollects. \u201cThe moment fields started diminishing,\u201d he says, \u201cinterest in football dropped and these young ones who are supposed to have that sort of field to enjoy have no place to go.\u201d \u201cIt is very difficult,\u201d Polo said.<\/p>\n A neglected pitch<\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A neglected pitch \u201cIt was a difficult game,\u201d Sir Alex Ferguson, a former manager of English Premier League club, Manchester United, noted. Looking visibly disappointed, he added, \u201cthe pitch was poor.\u201d A pantheon, whose nous for this game is only matched by their own intellect, an intellect the football industry will forever adore could not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1243653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[6609,7105,18844,18917,3357,7710],"class_list":{"0":"post-1243651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-inadequate","9":"tag-killing","10":"tag-nima","11":"tag-pitches","12":"tag-story","13":"tag-talents"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1243651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1243651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1243651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1243651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1243651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}