GFA, A Complete Mess

THE current confusion evolving around Ghana’s ‘professional’ Premier League’s 2003 season over who owns the right to screen matches, is the latest controversy to have enveloped the what clearly now appears to be a hapless GFA, Ghana’s football governing body. Benin coach Sir Cecil Jones Attuquayefio recently criticised the Ghanaian football controlling body, calling it a toothless bulldog.

Whilst the once awful Ghana football continue to be on the decline, our authorities also continue to fail embarrassingly to administer the game and its matters efficiently.

After the Premier League run for the whole of last season without any sort of sponsorship, it naturally generated joy and happiness when Kinapharma came on board and offered a billion cedis as sponsorship package for this year’s league. But sad to relate, the GFA has been caught in another web of controversy by the sudden appearance of Crystal TV that the cable television network also had an existing contract with the FA which gives them exclusive rights to broadcast Premier League matches. The FA, which initially denied any deal with Crystal TV, admitted to the signed contract after the television network threatened to file a lawsuit against them. What a strange world of false denials we live in. Taking the conscience of the people for granted. It demands prosecution, doesn’t it? The lawyers should please tell us.

The GFA says the contract with Crystal TV, which dated back to November last year, was contracted in a hurry. That was at a time they didn’t know anyone would come on board, especially as that year’s league had attracted no sponsorship. Lame and unreasonable excuse, isn’t it? If not, does common sense apply that the GFA informs Kinapharma when they were signing the new contract with the medicine company? If it had been made knowledgeable to Kinapharma, couldn’t they have agreed to that with Crystal TV, especially when a TV station was coming on board? No Crystal TV says they would carry no adverts of Kinapharma when they screen Premier League matches, which Kinapharma reckons is a great loss to them.

One wonders what the GFA had in mind when it signed these two different contracts. How could they take the judgement of companies who needed the marketing of their products to succeed, for granted? The GFA wanted to play a double game which by all standards is unrealistic and above all, unreasonable. The FA has played into murky waters and it is a wonder who will be willing to enter into any contract with it again. Remember when GBL pulled out of their sponsorship of the league early last year, we didn’t get any sponsor for the whole of the season, until luckily Kinapharma came to the rescue this year.

The FA as it is now apparent, has problems entering into contracts. We are all witnesses to a contract with Yugoslav coach Millan Zivadinovic, which had a clause that gave the coach the option of terminating his contract within three months if he so wishes. And that contractual ineptitude resulted in the lazy Serbian walking away with $65,000 of hard-earned Ghanaian taxpayer’s money. Another sad spectacle is the bogus contract with American sports manufacturer, L-Sporto. The GFA even went ahead to organise a raffle that took away lots of money from hopeful Ghanaians who entered it. The raffle, sad to say, is yet to be drawn whilst the GFA are now set for a legal battle after it sued L-Sporto.

Even as the football authorities continue to make sure that we lose so much money, it remains a mystery why Ben Koufie (the much touted Mr. Honest) and his colleagues have not only been arraigned before the Fast Track Court, but surprisingly continue to stay at the helm of affairs. Guinness Ghana Ltd. is one company that deserves tons of commendations for its untiring support of the Black Stars. If my memory serves me right, Guinness has remained faithful to the cause of the Black Stars since the Burkina Faso 1998 Cup of African Nations through qualifiers to Nations Cups of 2000, 2002, 2004 and the 2002 World Cup qualifiers.

The Stars continue to fail but Guinness has not given up. Even when its former country Manager left and a new man came in the company remained committed in its support and sponsorship of the Black Stars. But with the latest string of controversies the GFA has brought to bear on themselves, I personally wonder if Guinness Ghana Ltd. will feel secured to be in a deal with the GFA. Let’s all pray.

The Ben Koufie led GFA deserves to be booted out of office. FIFA, the world governing body, says governments should not interfere in the running of football. But regardless of sanctions, I will personally call for their removal from office. After all in case of FIFA banning us from all competitions for more than a year or two, what are we going to lose? We are not in any competition be it U-17, U-20 or the hapless Black Stars themselves.

Perhaps we should listen to those who say we should privatise the national team. If a man like Herbert Mensah could work out sponsorship deals for his clubs with ease, then let’s all guess the good work three to four of such men could do if handed the responsibility of managing the Black Stars as a limited liability company. There certainly is no singing of swansong for Herbert Mensah, but to face the simple truth, it is apparent he has succeeded a contract with cellular phone company, NOKIA, for King Faisal. Hope we don’t forget Herbert was the same man who engineered Kotoko’s Spacefon deal.

GFA is also guilty in the way it handled the Charles Taylor transfer saga. A new issue is raging over the eligibility of the player to play in the Premier league against Power FC, Tano Bofoakwa and Hearts of Oak. The GFA is in a complete mess and it is about time we kicked this administration out and bring in fresh minds to do the job. There is also the need for a national debate on whether the Black Stars, the senior national soccer team, should be privatised.