What former Black Stars coach Chris Hughton says is affecting Ghana’s success

Former Black Stars coach Chris Hughton has called for greater stability in Ghana’s technical leadership, warning that the repeated turnover of head coaches is damaging the national team’s capacity to build anything durable. Speaking to BBC Sport Africa as Ghana prepares for its decisive 2027 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers against Somalia, Hughton argued that consistency is a precondition for progress rather than a luxury to be afforded when results permit.

The immediate circumstances give his remarks unusual force. Ghana lost their opening two Group C fixtures last month, 2-0 to Ivory Coast in Bouaké and 4-2 to The Gambia in Accra, and those defeats ended Carlos Queiroz’s second spell in charge after less than a month. The 73-year-old Portuguese had initially been appointed in April and led the team to the Round of 32 at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, where Ghana held England to a goalless draw before losing 1-0 to Colombia in the knockout stage. He left the position afterwards, returned in early September on the strength of his international experience, and was gone again by October. The Ghana Football Association has now placed Black Queens coach Kim Bjorkegren in temporary charge of the men’s team, borrowing from the women’s programme to fill a vacancy created by its own decision-making.

Hughton’s assessment addressed the effect on the players rather than the merits of any individual appointment. “When you have inconsistency in the amount of time when a manager is staying, it’s never good,” he said. “You want that consistency in the players [and] the players want that consistency in what they see in the manager.” The point concerns the practical work of a national team: tactical systems require repetition, selection patterns require justification that players can anticipate, and the trust between a squad and its coaching staff accumulates over months rather than fixtures. A group assembled for a few weeks each international window has limited enough time to develop shared understanding without also having to learn an entirely new approach each time.

He was also willing to credit what the team achieved under Queiroz at the World Cup. “What I saw in the World Cup is that they represented the country very well, particularly the England game,” he said. “And although it was very much a defensive outfit, there were opportunities to score.” That qualification matters, because it suggests the underlying material is not as deficient as the current crisis implies. A side capable of holding England and creating chances in a knockout tie is not one that requires the wholesale dismantling of its coaching structure after two poor results in a qualifying group.

The more troubling consequence Hughton identified is psychological. Repeated dismissals, he warned, can cultivate an unhealthy mentality in which players come to expect that the coach will be removed whenever results disappoint. That expectation corrodes accountability in a specific way: if the consequence of failure is borne consistently by the man on the touchline, the incentive for the squad to absorb difficulty and work through it diminishes. The pattern becomes self-reinforcing, since each dismissal confirms the players’ assumption and each subsequent appointment begins with diminished authority. Hughton speaks with direct experience of this cycle, having himself occupied and then vacated the position amid the same churn.

Ghana host Somalia at the Essipong Sports Stadium on Thursday, November 12, with kick-off at 15:00 GMT, and the return fixture follows on November 16. Both sides are seeking their first points of the group, and an interim coach is tasked with securing them. Whatever the outcome of the double-header, the structural question Hughton has raised will remain. The association must eventually decide whether it intends to appoint a coach and support him through a difficult period, or continue treating the position as the primary instrument for absorbing public dissatisfaction. The second approach has been tested repeatedly, and the results are visible in the group standings.

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