Avram Grant confirmed as coach of Ghana national soccer team

Israeli coach Avram Grant has officially been appointed the head coach of the Ghanian national soccer team, one of the world’s more competitive national squads.

The 59-year-old coach from Petah Tikva signed a 27-month contract that will keep him on as the West African national team coach until February 2017 — the end of that year’s intra-continental African Cup of Nations tournament.

Grant, who coached the Israeli national team from 2002-2006, is considered to be one of the most successful soccer coaches in the Jewish state’s history and has coached Premier League club teams Chelsea, Portsmouth and West Ham United.

Grant has also won four Israeli championships with club teams Maccabi Tel Aviv and Maccabi Haifa, winning two championships with each team in different stints throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

Grant is inheriting the team, colloquially known as “the Black Stars,” six weeks before the play Equatorial Guinea in the first match of the 2015 African Cup of Nations tournament; a daunting task for any head coach given the complexities behind the intricate dynamics of the sport.

Ghana, however, has undoubtedly been one of the most resilient African squads of the past decade and is heavily stocked with world-class players like Sulley Muntari, Andre Ayew and Kwadwo “Kojo” Asamoah — national superstars who play for some of Europe’s most prominent club teams.

“Avram Grant is a motivator and an organizer,” Ghanian Football Association President Kwesi Nyantekyie told BBC Sport. “We needed someone with a certain stature or pedigree who can manage the egos of our players as well as their expectations and those of Ghanaians in general,” Nyantekyie said, adding that he believed Grant could “turn things around” for the team.

The deal to make Grant the head coach has not been without controversy, as it is believed that the coach’s Israeli citizenship will prevent him from traveling to approximately 20 countries — mostly in the Middle East and North Africa — that bar Israeli citizens from entering their territory.

In 2012, Iranian club Sepahan Isfahan canceled a friendly match with Serbian giant Partizan Belgrade, Grant’s previous team, after refusing to play against a club led by an Israeli.

The Ghanian Football Association president, however, seemed untroubled by the notion that other countries could potentially deny entry to his team’s head coach and said that Grant assured him of an “alternative way” to avoid controversy.

“Very soon, in a matter of months, we should clear that,” Nyantekyie asserted.