The ex-Vasalunds shot-stopper assesses the performance of his former Black Stars boss
Former Ghana goalkeeper William Amamoo believes ex-Black Stars boss Milovan Rajevac does not rank among the best coaches to have led the national outfit despite his 2010 World Cup exploits.
Serbian coach Rajevac took charge of the Black Stars between 2008 and 2010, inspiring the side to a runners-up finish at the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations in Angola and a quarter-final berth at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
The World Cup feat remains the West Africans’ best ever performance in three tournaments appearances at the global showpiece, and Africa’s third-joint-best showing.
“Nobody in Ghana should think that Rajevac was one of our best coaches,” Amamoo, who played under Rajevac in 2009, told Happy FM. “If you look at the players we had, even if Sellas Tetteh had handled the team we had, we would have gone far.
“The core of the team that had qualified were players who had played together from the junior ranks. That was the vision that [former Ghana president Jerry John] Rawlings and the then GFA had.
“So if we will be honest, the best ever Ghana team is the 2006 to 2010. So if Milovan had been very smart, this team could have gotten to the semi-finals.”
After bursting onto the international scene in 2008, the former Vasalunds goalkeeper looked to be heading for a long career with the Black Stars until 2009, when he conceded four goals as a second-half substitute in a 4-3 defeat by Japan, a game which ended his association with the four-time African champions abruptly.
Rajevac left Ghana after the World Cup but has recently expressed a desire for a return to the Black Stars.
“Of course, I will be interested [if offered the opportunity to coach Ghana again],” the coach told Kumasi FM in June. “It will be very difficult to reject it because of my feelings for Ghanaians.
“Of course, Ghana is my second country, and the success I achieved there and how I felt cannot be compared to anything in this world.
“I still have many friends and am in touch with a lot of them.
“Everyone at the Ghana Football Association, the media, and my technical team contributed to my success, it was a collective success.”
Ghana and Rajevac came close to becoming the most successful African country at a World Cup tournament when Asamoah Gyan missed a last-gasp penalty in the quarter-final defeat to Uruguay.
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