Following ESPN Blogs Ghana’s report that Milovan Rajevac has done some percentage ratings for some players, the rebuttals have been coming in from various official quarters.

Through all this, I can only describe the situation as comical. The first paragraph of the report was clear:

ESPN Blogs Ghana has intercepted a copy of an evaluation list sent to Ghana’s coach by German football magazine, kicker Sportmagazin. (emphasis on sent to)

Nobody on this blog said Milovan Rajevac has/had written a list of players that will go to South Africa. What he did was to invite kicker Sportmagazin to make an intellectual guess as to who they - kicker - thought would make it. (Kindly note that kicker is always spelled in the lower case)

And they did. And Rajevac gave his opinions on the list kicker had brought.

Simple as that. What's all the media fuss for?

Barely two hours after the story was posted here, Ghanasoccernet, a very popular Ghanaian football news portal reported a denial from the coach. The story quoted the Serbian as saying:

“This is absolutely not true and the list should be disregarded. We need to finish monnitoring (sic) first before I travel to Accra to discuss plans with my bosses. We have several delicate balances to make and these are only discussed with my bosses and not a German newspaper. Please ignore that publication.”

This morning, the same website has also reported that the ‘hard-working’ Vice President of the Ghana Football Association, Fred Pappoe also rubbished the story, quoting him as saying:

“The squad being bandied about is absolutely not our squad list. Our coach is still looking at the players and will have to thoroughly observe all the players before we make the squad public. We have up till 11 May according to Fifa, to release a squad of up to 30 players. We will release the squad before that deadline.”

Thing is, Milovan has not denied having an interview with kicker on Monday, has he? In fact, he cannot, because he WAS in Frankfurt on Monday. This morning on an Accra-based radio station, I heard the FA president, Kwesi Nyantakyi, admitting that Rajevac was in Germany on Monday. So what’s the big deal?

Or do they want me to tell them what hotel and at what time the interview was done?

I cannot blame the FA officials for the comments they have made, but the people who did not read the story properly and asked them hollow questions. And I won’t bother asking the FA if it is true, because ESPN does not associate itself with forgers.

We can all do so much more for journalism.

And oh, the coach DID indicate those percentage ratings.

Till later.

Or follow me personally @garyalsmith