The coming-of-age moment has finally arrived for Medeama. It’s been some time coming, it did take some doing but it has been pulled off. Medeama are champions.
Ahead of the final matchday of the campaign, they had it all in their hands, an enviable position of strength and control. Three points clear of close challengers Bechem United and a date with a raucously charged set of fans versus the relegation-threatened Tamale City at the Akoon Park in what many had dubbed a coronation game of some sort.
They wouldn’t bottle it, would they? Well, they didn’t and now they have their hands on the title, one which is not only the first in the history of this football club but the first since 1977 that a club from Western Region toppled the rest of the pack in the top division. The scale of the achievement is massive but before we put perspective on proceedings, let’s rewind a bit to where it all began.
It was in May 2010 when Medeama – still reeling over their failed attempt to qualify for the top flight from the Division One – reached a crossroads. Moses Armah (known famously as Moses Parker or Mospacka in the footballing landscape) had had enough. The owner and bankroller’s dream to bring top-flight football to the people of Tarkwa had come crashing down in a play-off encounter versus Ebusua Dwarfs.
Concurrently Kessben FC, a top-flight club at the time had been put up for sale by disillusioned owner, Kwabena Kesse. The idea to purchase Kessben FC and rechristen it to Medeama SC was birthed. Talks immediately began between the two business moguls and in August 2010 a deal was brokered for $600,000 and the takeover was completed.
The club immediately began structural, hierarchical and sporting changes which were aimed at giving the team a face-lift and to prepare them for the challenges ahead and in the campaign that followed immediately in 2010/2011, they finished fourth on the league log behind only Asante Kotoko, Ashanti Gold and eventual winners Berekum Chelsea.
Further fourth-place finishes in the next two seasons (2011/2012 & 2012/2013) would make it a very respectable hat-trick of fourth-place finishes for Medeama and when they beat Asante Kotoko 1-0 to win their first-ever silverware in an FA Cup final win later in 2013, Medeama really had arrived. It was a sign of bigger things to come, a force was emerging and rival clubs had been sounded out of a potentially new rising adversary on the horizon in the top flight. And in 2015 they would further enhance their burgeoning reputation by beating Asante Kotoko 2-1 in yet another FA Cup final.
They would go on to participate in the CAF Confederations Cup and actually exceed expectations toppling the likes of Al-Ittihad Tripoli, Al-Ahly Shendi and Mamelodi Sundowns to qualify for the group stage of the competition, only missing out on a semifinal berth by a whisker after finishing third in the group with MO Bejaia coming second by virtue of a superior head-to-head. That atoned for the 2014 fiasco of not qualifying for the group stages of the Confederations Cup even though they recorded some very memorable victories in the preliminary rounds.
After the two FA Cup triumphs and the escapades in Africa that followed, it was apparent enough that Medeama were on an upward trajectory and everyone knew what they had to do and the trophy they had to win to consolidate their emergence, the one trophy which would put them in the elite conversation and put them on a high pedestal. By 2018 and under Samuel Boadu, they were playing the best football on the land with the brand of football the envy of all and sundry. They were in pole position to go on and win the championship but the Number 12 expose, chronicling corruption in the GFA dropped like a tsunami and the league was truncated.
Medeama would later in the 2019/2020 season suffer yet more agony of having a very good shot at winning the Premier League only for the campaign not to be completed yet again, this time because of the COVID-19 pandemic. By that point, they were still playing some brilliant stuff and almost every neutral and well-wisher in the local game was unequivocal in their assessments that Medeama deserved a Premier League title.
And after so much upheaval and turnover since that COVID campaign, Medeama finally have their most glorious moment in their still very embryonic history. It has not been all smooth and plain sailing though for the Yellow and Mauves. They began the season with coach David Duncan at the helm and after a very torrid period, Duncan exited and Umar Rabi came and also left midway through the season.
The club found themselves at a crossroads and were in sixes and sevens and decided to turn to Evans Adotey, mastermind of the first FA Cup triumph. He inherited a divided dressing room and went about immediately galvanizing a rudderless group. He also reinstated some of the old guard like Kwesi Donsu and Vincent Atinga who were both deemed too old by Duncan and had been jettisoned. Atinga has gone on to prove crucial in the title tilt scoring some very vital goals during the run-in when Medeama needed to pick points.
The club’s recruitment during the second round of the window also shone through. Jonathan Sowah scored 12 goals in 20 games en route to the title triumph while Felix Kyei who joined from Karela also morphed into a reliable shot-stopper for the club.
And now they look forward to participating in next season’s CAF Champions League at the newly-refurbished, almost-completed $16m 10,000 capacity Tarkwa na Absoso (TnA) stadium fully funded by sponsors Goldfields Ghana Limited. It is a glorious moment in the short history of this club, a dream and enviable scenario and with traditional behemoths Hearts and Kotoko in more disarray now more than ever and both showing very little signs of returning to their perch, it really could be a new dawn and era for Medeama to fully dominate and assert authority on the division in the coming years.
This maiden title triumph is the culmination of everything the club dreamed of being and achieving. It should spur them on to greater things.