The state-owned Graphic Sports has reported in its Friday edition that the Ghana U-17 Team that is set to play in the African U-17 Championship next week in Gabon have decided to stage a boycott of the tournament by refusing to embark on the trip.
A source close to the team, morale of the boys has sunk and they have vowed not travel for the tournament until their qualification bonuses are paid.
According to my checks, the players were promised $2,000 each by the GFA and ministry if they qualify but the promises have not yet been met with days to the grand competition.
Reading the story, gathering pieces from my sources and recollecting previous episodes of this all too common drama, I just cannot help but cringe. I cannot fathom why we claim to have so many healers but this nation so sick especially in football. We easily lose our head when it is football and no one seems to have seen or care about the impending danger.
This heinous system of singling out money as the only tool for motivation must be arrested, but more importantly, the brain behind this weakly concept must be arrested as well.
How on earth did we get here and where on earth are we heading to? That you actually have right thinking adults and honourable minister believing that they need to promise 14 and 15 year-old school boys money to wear the national colours and play their heart out for the nation?
To the extent these school boys find nothing proud and enthusing in flying in airplanes on state tickets, sleeping in hotels at the expense taxpayer and above all, the prestige of being selected to represent the nation.
They have none of that, and so are brave enough to gather the minutest of gut to threaten a boycott of that privilege done them by the state? This bonuses they demand are not for winning the FIFA gold cup like was done in 1991 and 1995, but for just qualifying to play in the Africa division of the championship?
This and many reasons account for why football alone continue to blow away the sports ministry’s insufficient budget resulting in the crippling of the other 44 sporting disciplines. Useless and extraneous expenses culminating in astronomous budgets from the GFA who sit comfortably to prepare because they won’t be the body to foot it. All have to be sadly borne by the public via a sportingly ignorant government.
I’m not against rewarding footballers for their sweat, but at age 16, must we shape the thinking of these lads that the nation has only money as the source of motivation? Must we shape these kids into growing to become money-grubbing adults?
Those of us who witnessed the Starlets 91 feat have come to appreciate what a national reward means. Then President Rawlings asked for specific streets in the hometowns of the victorious team members to be named after the squad. So in Accra, there is the “Starlets 91 Street” which still stands as a long standing reward for the team. There’s also a Starlets 91 street in Sunyani to honour the captain Alex Opoku,who was a native of Sunyani.
I still think that, it is not about the crazy crave for money at the turn of this generation, but more of the scarcity of right thinking leaders.
It is time somebody in authority gets brave enough to reinvent the wheels of our football and eradicate this crazy structure. It is high time somebody speaks sense, clear sense into the skulls of football officials who prepare budgets that includes money bonuses in the regions of thousands of dollars to be borne by the tax payer.
How should learned Ghana FA officials hold a meeting with an honourable minister of state to discuss and arrive at a conclusion that, the government, aside providing accommodation, feeding, per diem, training equipment, flight tickets, must also set aside dollars as winning bonuses for the kids. I mean how?
The idea behind these junior competitions is to assemble, groom, grow, discipline and guide a team of youngsters into a construction of a winsome adult side.
If your country is one that imbibes the culture of “money does all” into these innocent lads, why won’t they grow into adults who’ll draw a dagger to demand money before they play for the country – even under the watch of global cameras?
If your country unfortunately have leaders of the sort, whose fad are driven by money, nothing else motivates and excites anyone in the land.
There is this documentary of the 2006 U-17 World Cup in Nigeria I watched on a Swiss TV, the Stadt Zuerich. The Switzerland U-17 team of Pajtim Kasami, Granit Xhaka and Haris Seferovi? had just beaten Nigeria Eaglets in Abuja to claim the FIFA U-17.
Upon the team’s return to Zurich, the players, all of them elementary school pupils, were given the best of rewards any teenager could get in Switzerland. The then head of the Swiss Confederation (President) Hans-Rudolf Merz invited the team to the Federal Palace on a Sunday evening, and then each of these lands given a presidential handshake on live TV by the man they had only seen on TV, and read in books. The lads were visibly awe-stricken,and filled with joy. The newspaper explained that, the ceremony was held on Sunday evening to allow the classmates of these boys to watch their pals on TV having the honour of exchanging handshakes with the president. Also noteworthy that, Switzerland had never won a world cup at any level before in their history and so judging by their flourishing economy, one expected the president to hand over car keys to the boys, and also plots of land, like Ghana did in 2009.
But that was it. Presidential audience and handshake plus live broadcast on national TV. That was all. The kids were urged to aim higher and hit the top of their career. They were not handed dollar cheques, cars and houses to make them believe life was over. They had to make most of the privileged national team selection to seek individual career improvement. The pride.
This is a sharp contrast to what pertains in our part of the world. It is a sad spectacle and need be for it to be critically addressed. The trend, apart from being unsustainable for our frail economy, is a very dangerous one that has the potential of ruining the game. That is if it has not done already.
In the last three years, Ghana has come under negative spotlight due boycotts, mutinies, sit-ins and shameless protests staged by various national soccer teams demanding financial promises. These promises are subconsciously made by the football association, and to be paid by an uninformed government.
There’s no organised football federation in this world that makes school boys in junior national team have the slightest of thoughts that they play to make money from the state at that age. It is an absolutely wrong picture that will be painted by only brazen and unembarrassed leaders.
There are many things gravely sickening with Ghana football, chiefly amongst them, the money-making ideology.
Brazil didn’t change us and I’m not sure anything else will. Until there’s a proper overhaul of ideas in the management of our game from the sports ministry to the football association, we will continue to ruin ourselves, the game and ultimately, the future kids we pay to play.
If the Starlets team was promised of bonuses and they qualified due to that, pay them from wherever funds are available after subsequently, there needs to be an immediate reversal of this despicable convention.
There should not be n debate over this. There is no need to have a committee to look into this. The institution of monetary rewards at junior national team levels must be immediately and immediately disbanded.
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