When it comes to creativity, it’s hard to rate the guys at the Ghana Football Association (GFA) too highly.
Four years ago, they gave us a logo for the Ghana Premier League that’s still too painful to look at; the only positive about the concept was that it was original, at least, given its predecessor was plucked right from the Italian second tier and ‘adapted’ to suit local tastes.
The current GFA’s staff of creatives, clearly, didn’t see the need to upgrade it to something more aesthetically pleasing after taking charge – a sign of things to come, it turned out – and they weren’t any more inclined to improve on the other ‘ugly’ creations they inherited, like those trophies awarded to the winners of the league and of the FA Cup.
Before long, in fact, they unleashed their own horrors: sets of medals that could easily pass for rather poorly-fashioned keyrings. With all that in mind, then, my hopes weren’t exactly shooting through the roof when news broke late on Tuesday about the GFA renaming of some of the country’s national teams.
Actually, some of the new nicknames aren’t so bad: the Black Comets (U-15, boys), the Black Damsels (U-15, girls), and the Black Sharks (beach soccer team). And then there is – drumroll, please – the big one: Black Galaxies, for the erstwhile Black Stars B… which, if you ask me, is more miss than hit.
Don’t get me wrong; I do appreciate the thought process that appears to have gone into arriving at this choice. The relationship between ‘stars’ and ‘galaxies’ is obvious to anyone familiar with the English language, and it’s understandable that those responsible for finding the new name didn’t want to stray too far from the original.
‘Galaxies’, though, suggests each member of the team is a galaxy on his own. With a single galaxy being comprised of a number of stars, then, just how many stars does a single player represent? Again, since one galaxy is far bigger than a solitary star, does it stand to reason that the Black Galaxies are somewhat superior/senior to the Black Stars?
I don’t know about you, but it just doesn’t add up.
It should be said, though, that the naming committee’s job couldn’t have been an easy one.
Christening the flagship national team the Black Stars, over six decades ago, was a rather brilliant idea (hint: see the Ghanaian flag). But that only set us on a path that we’ve been stuck on ever since – an upward trajectory, if you like – restricting the nomenclature for our men’s national team to the celestial realm: Starlets, Satellites, Meteors, Comets, and Galaxies.
And considering the alternatives open to us – Black Asteroids? Black Supernovae? Black Planets? Black Pulsars? Or, perhaps, Black Holes? – we really could do worse.
The sky, when you think of it, truly is our limit.
