Ghana. Mr Sputnik. Goals.
Fiifi Anaman tells the story of the legendary player who many believe is the greatest goal scorer Ghana has ever seen.
Note: This profile is a sequel (or a spin-off of sorts, if you will) to my last piece: Ghana. Baba Yara. Football.
The Old Man
He knew he was on his way out. He had long retired. He was tired.
This was not only because he was an old man — he was six years past the biblical life length of three score years and ten — but because he was wrestling with the second most common cancerous tumor worldwide.
He had been bed-ridden by prostate cancer.
He didn’t want to fight anymore.
In his ominous opinion, it was a losing battle.
“Forget about it,” the old man told his second son, Edmund, who had bought and brought drugs for his father.
It was the morning of October 5, 2011.
The old man had earlier consistently told Edmund and his siblings that their attempts to save him from imminent death were unnecessary.
Unappreciated, even.
“He used to tell us that we were worrying him,” Edmund recalls.
That evening, the old man died.
The Young Man
In 1969, 42 years earlier, the old man, then a young man at 34, had been a part of the procession undertaken by a large crowd who mourned the death of the great Baba Yara, his friend.
Walking by the coffin, the young man was seen crying uncontrollably.
The young man and Yara had been close teammates at Real Republikans, a team formed by then Ghana president Kwame “Osagyefo” Nkrumah, and known as OOC (Osagyefo’s Own Club).
Yara had died aged 33, after years of being paralyzed and bed-ridden. This was a calamitous consequence of a spinal injury sustained in a motor accident which the young man could have been in.
That tragic accident had happened six years earlier at Kpeve, Volta Region.
The young man had narrowly escaped it because he had, in the company of some senior players at Republikans, driven in his car instead of the team bus on their return to Accra following a game in Kpando.
After the accident, the young man had flown to the UK, where Yara had been sent for treatment, to visit his friend and encourage him.
Indeed, Yara and the young man were among the biggest stars at OOC.
The Old Man II
Back to 2011.
Unlike the massive mourning and celebration of life that accompanied Baba Yara’s funeral, this old man’s funeral was quiet — no large crowd of mourners and no national acknowledgement or celebration of his legacy.
The old man had taken a “lonely way to join his ancestors”, according to veteran journalist Cameron Duodu.
This was degrading.
This was disappointing.
Because this was the once-famous Edward Acquah, a man Kwame Nkrumah darlingly described as “Ghana’s greatest match winner.”
The only major honour done Acquah was a nationwide minute’s silence ordered by the Ghana Football Association’s Professional League Board at all league match centers.
It is possible that none of the players — if not the majority — who participated in that exercise knew who Acquah was.
“Ghana refuses to recognize its national treasures,” wrote Duodu. “Let alone look after them.”
From saving to shooting
Edward Kobina Acquah was born in Elmina, in Ghana’s Central Region.
The ancient town of Elmina is a two-hour drive from Sekondi, Western Region — which became Acquah’s hometown, and where he died and was buried.
Acquah started his career playing for his hometown club Sekondi XI Wise. His father, Kojo Acquah, had also been a footballer who played for Wise, and was reportedly regarded as one of the most gifted strikers of his generation.
At Wise, unlike his father, Edward Acquah started out as a goalkeeper. But, as the story goes, one day, before a match, Acquah was asked to fill in upfront for a center forward who had gone off in mercenary fashion to play for another club.
The goalkeeper surprisingly segued into a goal scorer, securing two goals as his side won. From then on, the opposition’s box became his home, and boy did he eventually own the space, turning dramatically from visitor to landlord.
Acquah became very comfortable as a center forward, making it his “pet position”, according to Ohene Djan, Ghana’s former FA chairman and first Director of Sport.
During the process of regularizing his place in the box, Acquah had been tried in the attacking position that had been dominated and popularized by his friend Baba Yara — the right wing.
Yet he didn’t prove as good as Yara there, as he was more “dependable” (as Djan wrote) than skillful. It was clear he was rather made for the center forward position.
According to writer Alex Ayim Ohene, Acquah became the “princely complete center forward of his time”, with the 18-yard box becoming his palace, where he solely ruled.
If Baba Yara was Ghana’s greatest winger, then Edward Acquah, according to many, was Ghana’s greatest striker.
Above all
Asamoah Gyan, Ghana’s legendary striker of the 21st century who scored 51 goals in 109 caps, including a record six goals for an African at the World Cup, is often described as Ghana’s greatest, most prolific international goal scorer, not least because his goal tally is the highest in the Black Stars’ 64-year history.
Yet as far back as in 1964, Edward Acquah — and it is possible that Gyan does not know who he (truly) was — was described by Ohene Djan as “the most prolific scorer in Ghana soccer history.”
Ghana has a long tradition of producing prolific scorers in every generation.
These scorers have been rare during their time, owing to the country’s difficulty in churning out multiple major marksmen at a time.
They have often found themselves shouldering a lot of the national burden of putting the ball inthe back of the net.
Before there was Asamoah Gyan in the 2000s, before there was Abedi Pele and Tony Yeboah in the 90s, before there was George Alhassan in the 80s, before there were Opoku Afriyie and Kwasi Wusu in the 70s, and before there was Osei Kofi in the late 60s, there was Edward Acquah, the Godfather of Ghanaian goal scoring, the first of his elite kind.
When it came to pure, natural goalscoring abilities, Acquah towered above both his successors and competitors, physically and metaphorically.
Not even C.K Gyamfi, Ghana’s first great prolific center forward, could match Acquah’s mastery of goal scoring.
Gyamfi may have been more complete and versatile, more skillful and colourful, a jack of all trades, but Acquah was a master of one. He was a one trick pony, known for his goals only, and that was just about enough.
No Ghanaian footballer has known goalscoring more than Acquah, and none has come to the party in as many high-profile games and tournaments as the goal machine from Sekondi.
His CV glitters with glaring evidence.
In January 1960, Acquah scored twice in the final as Ghana won the maiden West African Football Championship (Nkrumah Gold Cup), beating Sierra Leone 6–2 in the final.
In May 1960, when the famous English team Blackpool came to Accra to play the Black Stars, Acquah scored not one, not two, not a hattrick, but five goals as the Black Stars won 5–1. A glorious glut. “Acquah, the hero of the match of the year!” the Daily Graphic announced proudly. “Acquah scored 1–2–3–4–5 goals!”
In August/September of 1960, Acquah scored three goals across two home and away World Cup qualifiers against Nigeria. The Black Stars only missed out on a possible qualification to Chile 1962 by losing their next tie against Morocco.
In October of the same year, Acquah bagged four goals — a brace each in the semi-final and in the final — as Ghana won the second edition of the Nkrumah Gold Cup in Lagos, Nigeria.
In June 1961, when the amateur Black Stars team went on a historic tour of Eastern Europe, meeting high profile and professional opponents, Acquah emerged as the top scorer, banging in 11 goals in 12 matches.
In August 1962, when the all-conquering Real Madrid, the world’s most successful, most powerful football club, visited Ghana, Acquah scored twice as the Black Stars held Los Merengues to a surprsing, shocking 3–3 draw.
In October that same year, when the Black Stars went on a tour of East Africa, winning the Uhuru Cup as well as playing in some friendlies, Acquah emerged as the top scorer with a whooping 13 goals in 6 matches.
When Ghana won its third Nkrumah Gold Cup in February 1963, Acquah scored once in the semi-final — where Ghana defeated Nigeria 5–0 — and thrice in the final — where Ghana defeated Mali 4–0.
In December 1963, Acquah scored four goals in the Africa Cup of Nations hosted in Ghana. His two goals against Ethiopia helped Ghana qualify from the group phase, and his brace in the final helped Ghana to a 3–0 win over Sudan, winning the trophy for the first time.
In October 1964, when Ghana became the first Sub Saharan African nation to qualify for the Olympics, Acquah scored twice in the qualifiers and once at the main tournament — an 80th minute equalizer in a 1–1 draw against Argentina.
That goal — described by Djan as Acquah’s “greatest goal” — eventually helped Ghana secure first place in their group, which also contained hosts Japan.
For country and club
Acquah’s club football journey started out at Eleven Wise. He left to help found Sekondi Independence, and later returned to Wise.
After his second Wise stint, he got recruited into Real Republikans.
At Wise, he had captained the side and gathered goals as usual, miraculously pulling the club from the bottom of the 1959/60 league table to the top of the 1960/61 league season.
This unlikely league triumph, described by Djan as a “phenomenal feat”, was achieved after a close title fight between Wise and defending champions Kotoko.
As Djan wrote, Wise had been an “unwanted” club from 1959, “gratuitously spared relegation”, yet they had “stirred themselves from slumber” to climb unto the “championship throne” within a year. And all of this, which earned Wise the tag “Western Show Boys”, was inspired almost single-handedly by Edward Acquah.
The Western Show Boy went on to win four FA Cups and a league title with Real Republikans, including the league and cup double in 1963.
In an era of poor archiving and record keeping, Acquah’s exact goal scoring figures were unknown.
But there are estimated claims.
Although it may have been an inaccurate exaggeration, Djan claimed that Acquah scored over 400 goals in league and friendly encounters across his club career.
Djan went on the claim that by 1964, Acquah had scored 166 goals in 67 games, when his tally from international games and Ghanaian regional representative games were combined.
The football records organization RSSSF claims Acquah scored 45 times in 41 international caps for Ghana, while celebrated historian, the late Thomas Freeman Yeboah, postulated that Acquah managed 40 official goals in international matches before retiring in 1964.
“Eddie is essentially a goal getter,” Djan simply concluded.
“He was the most famous goal merchant of them all,” Ayim Ohene added.
A strong presence, a strange case
As a striker, Acquah looked more intimidating than impressive.
He was strikingly tall, and thus vertically far away from the ball. He looked more like a goalkeeper, as he once was, standing at 6ft 11 inches.
He was “powerfully-built” (Duodo), especially in the torso area, with long limbs.
He oozed power, rather than technique.
According to Ayim Ohene, Acquah was a “powerhouse of solid muscle” with “muscular legs and abdomen”, as well as “tremendous power in his thighs”.
“Yie!” exclaims Kofi Pare, a teammate of Acquah’s at Real Republikans, “he was scary!”
“I would say 180–200 pounds in weight,” wrote Cameron Duodu. “I suspected he wore size 13 to 14 boots, but I never dared to ask him!”
“He was thick and tall,” says Dogo Moro, the highly rated defender from Acquah’s era.
“His frame was no child’s play at all.”
The mystery man
As a striker, Acquah defied convention in many ways. Some fans called him “the mystery man”, because of his ability to score from acute angles, and also because, according to Ayim Ohene, “he was blessed with a sense of timing, contrasting rhythms that verged on mystery”.
But this mysterious persona was concurrently apt for someone who was that paradoxical.
The perceived deficiencies in Acquah’s game, those demerits, seemed certainly more than the merits.
Many fans complained and criticized:
He was so slow.
He was sluggish.
He was laborious.
He was…well, uninteresting, hard to watch.
“Many times, sports fans have suggested that he should not be included in our team for big games,” wrote the Daily Graphic.
Here’s the thing: Acquah was good, yet didn’t look it at all. He was a precursor to a player like Germany’s Thomas Mueller — colourless, lacking the looks of a baller, yet with an intelligent reading of the game and deadly finishing.
His ball manners were bland and bizarre too. “Acquah was so clumsy on his feet that he hardly ever scored without first fighting the ball — with his feet,” claimed Duodu.
This, Duodu argued, could be blamed on the fact that he had been a goal keeper before.
“Because he was used to standing in a stationary position for long periods between the goalposts, his feet were not used to the nimble steps by which a centre forward acquired the ball, slipped it past the defenders of the opposing team, and then shot at goal.”
Acquah’s style was thus fairly spartan; he was not of the skillful species, not the brilliant ball bearer or the daring dribbler.
With him, the end always seemed matter more than the means — no sophisticated showboating, just proper positioning, sharp shooting and fierce finishing.
There was a sense of efficacy over beauty in Acquah’s philosophy of striking, of power over elegance, of will over skill.
“He wasn’t skillful at all,” Moro admits.
“Unlike some of us, Eddie didn’t know how to dribble,” adds Wilberforce Mfum, Acquah’s close friend and long-time striking partner for the Black Stars.
Acquah was therefore an enigmatic exception in a Ghana side that was famed for featuring fantastic footballers with the ability to handle the ball with nimble-footed finesse.
Due to this, he wasn’t exactly charismatic at first sight. Fans would initially dislike him, taking a while to warm up to him.
But ultimately, he always served humble pies. When it mattered most, he would become the toast of fans with his “fighting spirit” (Graphic) and his “energy, discipline and hard work” (Ibrahin Sunday, former African Player of the Year).
“Acquah has often lived up to expectation in international matches,” Graphic wrote.
Indeed, when it came down to what he was good at — fearsome, ferrocious shooting — Acquah was unmatched.
“He was perfect at shooting,” says Moro. “When the ball fell to his feet, you knew it was going in.”
“In terms of shooting, he was one of a kind,” Mfum says. “I remember his ruthless shots both in match situations and from penalties and freekicks.”
“He had great shooting abilities; all he knew was to shoot, shoot and shoot,” says Sunday. “This resulted in him scoring a lot of goals from far and near.”
Acquah excelled at everything that had to do with goalscoring —positioning, heading and shooting.
He exhibited a refreshing simplicity too. For him, football was a simple game, and his job was equally so — to shoot and score. To get goals. Precise and concise. Straight-forward. He was very mechanical — no fuss, just forceful finishing.
Indeed, people believed Acquah’s only technical ability was to shoot powerfully and accurately, but this one-dimensional nature was rarely an influential flaw because he was flawless at what he specialized in.
In fact, Acquah was the guy you’d put at the anchor leg in a relay race, because he was an ace in the art of finishing.
He was an instinctive, cold-blooded, no-nonsense hit-man who rarely missed his target.
“In the whole of Ghana, nobody knew how to score goals better than Acquah,” says Pare. “Noone hit a shot better. No one scored more goals.”
So good was he, apparently, that he scored in almost every game he played in.
Seriously, almost every game.
From 1956 to 1964, there was barely a national team game whose match report didn’t feature Acquah’s name on the score sheet. The man was married to goals.
It goes without saying that Ghana owes a debt of gratitude to whoever took the decision to transform Acquah from keeper to striker.
That migration from the goal posts into the penalty box, from number one to number nine, influenced the history of Ghana football forever.
The sting of a shot
Acquah was known as much for his goals as he was for the weight of his shots.
With “dynamite in his boots”, Ayim Ohene claims that Acquah’s shots were “missiles”, as well as “drives struck effortlessly with colossal power” which “no footballer in history has ever surpassed.”
And it’s not as if he didn’t have competition or competent coevals. Acquah operated in an era of top attackers known for being heavy hitters in terms of shooting.
Nigeria’s Teslimi “Thunder” Balogun once struck shots that caused Ghanaian goalkeeper Lamptey Mills to develop chest pains, later resulting in him being rushed to the hospital.
Wilberforce Mfum once launched a rocket shot that tore through a goal net.
So, what about Acquah?
Mfum: “When the ball fell to him in the goal area and he swung his foot at the ball, as a goalkeeper, you had to run away!”
Acquah’s shots were, quite frankly, brutal.
Ayim Ohene: “He could deliver a match-winning shot that would have cut through a net made of reinforced steel”.
How about the following?
Ayim Ohene: “He was one of the most lethal strikers in the game.”
Djan: “His shots were deadly.”
Both men may not have realized, but their observations had an almost literal meaning.
There was a time, during the Black Stars’ tour of Eastern Africa in 1962, in a game against Kenya, when Acquah clobbered the ball so viciously that it almost murdered the opposing goalkeeper.
“Acquah’s full-blast bullet collapsed Kenya’s European goalie,” a report said, “and he was carried of unconscious to the hospital.”
A Satellite
Long before Ghana’s U-20 national team was named “Satellites”, a special Satellite existed in Ghana football.
In October 1957, seven months after Ghana gained independence, and almost a year after Acquah’s national debut — where he scored a hattrick in a 4–3 victory over Sierra Leone in the Akwei Cup — the Soviet Union launched a controversial space satellite called Sputnik 1 (Satellite 1).
Sputnik 1 one was historic for many things — it was the world’s first artificial satellite to be put into outter space; it triggered the American Sputnik crisis; and it gave birth to the Space Race, which became part of the Cold War.
But for Ghanaians, the name Sputnik would become iconic and historic because of one-man: Edward Acquah.
It is not clear why fans famously nicknamed Acquah “Mr Sputnik”, or “The man with the Sputnik shot”, but the name stuck, becoming a household moniker.
The Etymology of the word sputnik, according to Wikipedia, says that it was coined in the 18th century by combining the prefix ‘s’ (meaning together) and ‘putnik’ (meaning traveller), thereby collectively meaning ‘fellow traveler’, or ‘travelling together’. This corresponds to the Latin root Satelles, the origin of the English word Satellite, which means “guard, attendant or companion.”
Acquah earned the name probably because:
…his gravity-defying shots were as powerful and pacy as the rocket that launched Sputnik 1 into space;
…or that purposeful power was the companion of any ball struck by Acquah as it travelled into the net;
…or that his knack for goals was as extra-terrestrial as the Sputnik 1.
Fancy a pick?
A TUC Giant
Within the national team, the Black Stars, Acquah’s influence was far-reaching. Apart from scoring “dozens of goals” for the team, (Graphic), he was one of the players, along with Mfum, around whom the team revolved — in terms of player power.
Acquah and Mfum were known as the “TUC Giants”, not because of the fact that they worked at the TUC (Trades Union Congress), or that they were physical giants, but because they were the players who were closest to authority.
The TUC giants were the players at the the top in terms of the hierachy of influence within the team, the next level below being the “cabinet”.
“We used to be the ones who would listen to the team’s concerns and needs in order to send proposals and reports to Ohene Djan, who would then relay it to president Nkumah,” Mfum says. “Djan also consulted us on a lot of issues regarding the team.”
The “cabinet”, the body in between the TUC giants and the rest of the team’s general playing body, was where the team’s issues were discussed and decisions made.
“The cabinet was made up of the team’s seniormost players,” he says. “There was myself, Acquah, team captain Aggrey Fynn, Charles Addo Odametey (who later became captain) and goalkeeper Dodoo Ankrah.”
In terms of the cabinet, the TUC giants were the primus inter pares. Although it was the norm for Djan to have regular meetings with the cabinet, when he was not present, Mfum and Acquah were the ones who would transmit cabinet decisions to Djan. “Every information passed through us,” Mfum reveals.
Mfum, who succeeded Fynn as captain, says himself and Acquah were especially pampered by Ohene Djan not least in terms of incentives, because they used to score a lot of goals for the team.
It was true, the goals thing. During the Black Stars’ Eastern European tour of ’61, Acquah and Mfum combined to score 18 of the team’s 32 goals.
As part of the Black Stars’ East African tour of ’62, both players joined forces to score 22 of the team’s 34 goals.
On the team’s road to the ‘63 Afcon title, the duo were responsible for five of the six goals scored.
And, after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics campaign, the TUC giants had scored two of the Black Stars’ five goals.
“Djan was so fond of us because the team’s fortune was in our hands,” Mfum says. “Matches depended on us. We were permanent fixtures — we were never dropped.”
“I was number eight and Acquah was number nine,” Mfum recalls with nostalgia. “He wore size 12 boots and I wore 10 and half,” he adds, laughing.
“We were both well-built, and we were both strikers. We scored almost all of the team’s goals. The other players who came close in goal scoring were Baba Yara and Mohammed Salisu.”
The greatest match-winner
On a calm Saturday in September 1962. the Flagstaff House, as the seat of Ghana’s presidency was then called, was busy, bustling with activity. There was music, there was food and there were friendly interactions.
Sportsmen, led by Sports Director Ohene Djan, had gone to pay a courtesy call on president Nkrumah in order to pay tribute to his “immense” contribution to sports in the country.
They were also there to “pledge their loyalty and solidarity to the person and office of Osagyefo the President”, as the Daily Graphic reported.
Amid many other sportsmen, there were players from Real Republikans, Nkrumah’s club.
Overwhelmed by all the tributes and love shown, Nkrumah walked among the sportsmen to express his gratitude, greeting all of them, one after the other, engaging in hearty conversations of encouragement.
Then he got to a tall, fine gentleman. “Acquah, my lad!” he affectionately called out. “Your performance against Real Madrid was wonderful!”
To catch the specific attention of the President — a man known to be very hard to please — and be furnished with such high praise, was something special, and only exceptional sportsmen could make that happen.
“He used to tell me that Nkrumah gave him certain privileges,” Acquah’s son Edmund says. “He said, Nkrumah would say, ‘Go and do it for me, my boy!”
Indeed, it was after Acquah’s brace against Real Madrid that Nkrumah famously called him “Ghana’s greatest match winner.”
After that game, the Daily Graphic dedicated a page to Acquah, praising his prowess.
In an article titled: Meet our priceless footballer: Acquah — Ghana’s top scorer — the paper heralded him as “Ghana’s most outstanding goal merchant”.
“If there is any single footballer who has helped a great deal to put Ghana on the map since the re-organization of soccer under the leadership of Sports Director Ohene Djan, that man is Edward Acquah,” the introduction of the article screamed, in caps.
In 1963, after years of great goalscoring, Acquah was decorated with the Footballer of the Year Award organized by the Daily Graphic.
National coach C.K Gyamfi, who knew a thing or two about being a great footballer, was the head of the judges that set the criteria for voting by the public.
Gyamfi outlined the criteria as follows: Sportsmanship, serious training, physical fitness, speed, skill in the air, body swerve, anticipation, courage, tactical skill and conduct off the field.
Acquah may not have ticked all the boxes, but he still won.
Goal scoring was all he knew, and he had scored his way to that prestigious honour.
A gentle giant
As a man, Acquah was a “gentle giant”, wrote Ayim Ohene. “Though physically imposing, he was never intimidating,” Ayim Ohene wrote.
He was “mild mannered” and “humorous”, Ayim Ohene added, preferring to “play his way out of trouble”. He also “wanted fair play”.
Veteran sports writer Ken Bediako remembers Acquah to be a very jovial, gregarious man.
His son, Edmund Acquah, simply remembers his father as being very “calm”.
“He loved to spend time with his friends,” Edmund says.
During Acquah’s career, his inner circle of friends were the senior players within the Real Republikans’ set up, as well as within the Black Stars’ cabinet, the likes of C.K Gyamfi (earlier) Edward Aggrey Fynn, Wilberforce Mfum and of course, Baba Yara (later).
The Last Days
“In his latter years, he lived in the shadows,” Edmund says of his father. “He lived a quiet life.”
In the years immediately preceding his death, there were rumours and some belief that Acquah was living a miserable life in his old age.
Ayim Ohene wrote that Acquah was in Sekondi “struggling to make a living”, while Cameron Duodu wrote that he believed Acquah had become “impoverished” before dying.
“That was not exactly true,” Edmund says. “My dad lived a dignified, decent life before passing.”
So, how was he like as a father?
“He was interesting,” Edmund smiles. “He used to watch me play football and would criticize me a lot. Generally, he favoured academics more than football when it came to his children.”
Was Acquah celebrated enough?
Was he known enough?
Were his achievements and legacy recognizable enough?
“If we check from the records, we will find out that he did his best,” Edmund whispers, humbly.
Edward Kobina Acquah, ladies and gentlemen.
