Winful Cobbinah is a special talent and I have said that many times but careful scrutiny and analysis – devoid of any sort of prejudice – of his contribution to Hearts of Oak in the FA Cup last season shows that his personal contribution was never that weighty to win him the FA Cup Most Valuable Player over Kotoko’s Sadick Adams – scorer of a hat trick in the highly anticipated Tamale grande finale against Cobbinah’s Hearts of Oak.
For starters this is the single most scandalous and most corrupt award I have ever witnessed in the country. This is not only denying a more credible winner. It is also a confirmation of the abysmal work done by the MTN FA Cup committee in organizing this year’s awards and seriously injures the reputation of the competition organizers.
“We were struggling with the data collection of the competition and that has also resulted in the delay of the awards night.” Kurt Okraku said in a radio interview with Metro FM.
This is not acceptable that a competition organizer struggles to establish the facts and figures of the competition it organizes and perhaps this is the reason why there was no award category recognizing the best goalkeeper of the FA Cup of last season because relevant and correct facts cannot be established- a department that has been awarded in previous ceremonies.
Again the FA Cup Committee which announced – since last year – Sunyani as the venue for the 2017 FA Cup Awards Night changed the venue to Accra in the last minute citing difficulties of securing a suitable location in the Brong Ahafo capital to host the ceremony. That , securing a place to organize an a social event in Sunyani is more difficult than Accra? This reason is not credible to believe by any measure financially or geographically.
Back to the main issue. Is Winful Cobbinah a fine player ? Yes. Is he a deserving winner of the FA Cup best player award? No.
Hearts of Oak scored 11 goals in 6 FA Cup games last season. Cobbinah – a number 10 – scored zero of those goals and didn’t even take part in the quarterfinal game against Danbort at the Accra sports stadium and his side’s 1-0 Round of 16 against Young Wise in which he was an unused substitute. His personal contribution to the team was factually and honestly limited and when it mattered most he was not there for the Phobian club.
Winful Cobbinah in the FA Cup last season
1.Round of 64 – Hearts of Oak 2 Mirren 1 – Anthony Nimoh, Patrick Razak. Cobbinah started.
2.Round of 32 – Hearts 4 Kotoku Royals 0 – Vincent Atingah 2 goals, Cosmos Dauda, Kwame Kizito. Cobbinah played and was lively providing some assists.
3.Semifinals – Hearts 2 All Stars 1 in Obuasi. Goals scored by Razak and Kizito. Both goals assisted by Thomas Abbey.
4.Final – Hearts of Oak 1 Kotoko 3. Thomas Abbey scored the goal for Hearts assisted by Fatawu. Cobbinah failed to lift his side when his influence was needed the most. It was a bad day for him and his teammates.
So four games played, Cobbinah. 1 assist. 0 goal scored. Had a terrible final game when his team needed him the most.
Sadick Adams’ performance in the 2017 FA Cup
1.Qfinals – Kotoko 2 NEA Salamina 1- Sadick scored first goal from a header, Amos Frimpong scored a second from pen.
2.Semifinals – Medeama 0 Kotoko 1 in Obuasi. Sadick came off the bench to score the important winning goal.
3.Finals – Kotoko 3 Hearts of Oak 1 in Tamale. Sadick scored a first half hat trick an unprecedented feat for so many years. His team lifted the ultimate trophy on top of that.
3 games played. 5 goals scored including a hat trick in the biggest final match.
Sadick also finished as joint-topscorer of the competition on 5 goals as Raphael Ocloo of Okyeman Planners.
The third contender – Isaac Amoah of Amidaus – who exited the competition at the quarter-final was the least expected to win and rightly so.
So how on earth should Cobbinah who scored zero goals in the whole competition and assisted none from the deeper stages of the competition from the quarter-final of the FA Cup onwards be adjudged the overall best player of the the same competition?
According to the FA Cup committee. “The seventh edition of the MTN FA Cup awards is to honor outstanding and deserving players, coaches, match officials and other significant individuals.”
Awarding Cobbinah over Sadick reduces the award makers into a laughing stock and shows how incompetent they were so far as this award category is concerned because even Cobbinah- deep inside him, figuratively, knows that he was never the most outstanding player in the games that he played especially from the last eight to the ultimate final game in Tamale.
If this is not a deliberate bias then it is a monumental shoddy work by the organizers. And if it is not any of these then I struggle to understand what it is.
By the facts and figures and the player impact in the most important stages of the FA Cup it is only an uninformed and biased panel of experts that will award Cobbinah as the best over Sadick Adams. This is a really poor job by the MTN FA Cup committee.
The Committee made their choice but the data and facts say otherwise. This should not be interpreted to mean hatred against the Hearts of Oak playmaker whom we all adore for his unbelievable quality but this a purely professional opinion supported by verifiable facts. Only facts. Nothing more.Nothing less.
