Under-20 officials don't take bribe - Yaw Preko declares

Assistant coach of the national under-20 male soccer team, Yaw Preko, has debunked allegations of bribery in team selection.

With the Ghana Football Association opening the door for a 5-day justify-your-inclusion exercise for interested Ghanaians plying their trade outside the country from Monday, the technical team, as well as the management committee has been widely criticized for what many describe as the chance to extort young desperate footballers.

It could be recalled that for the past two selections of U-20 players for global assignments in 2009 and 2013, there has been a series of accusations from certain angles including players, who attribute their omissions to their inability to offer ‘financial gifts’.

In 2009, FC Sion winger Ishmael Yartey accused Coach Sellas Tetteh of dropping him from his final squad for the World Youth Championship in Egypt due to his inability to offer money to the technical team.

And in 2013 which saw Ghana returning to the World Youth Championship after missing out on the 2011 edition, the exclusion of then Arsenal forward Zak Ansah, then Chelsea youth team captain Daniel Pappoe, Atletico Madrid’s Thomas Teye-Partey, AC Milan’s Kingsley Boateng and then Juventus midfielder Yusif Raman Chibsah, under various circumstances, left many bewildered.

Reacting to rumours of wide-spread allegations of bribery in the team on 103.5 FM, Preko, who joined the team in 2011, described the claims as unfounded.

“It’s not true,” the former Anderlecht winger declared. “Who doesn’t want to win a medal? When you’re a coach, you want players that would do the job for you.

“At the end of the day, it’s the boys who are on the pitch and if you give them instructions and they don’t take and you lose, it means your job is gone. We really want to have excellent and quality players on the pitch to do the job so when they talk about Satellites coaches taking bribe, it’s not true,” the former Black Stars winger explained.

On why Zak Ansah and Daniel Pappoe were controversially dropped after training with the team in Accra, Preko explained: “Zak came all the way from Arsenal and he suffered; he couldn’t take the weather and the physique of the game was too much for him.

“Pappoe was injured with ACL and you can see that after the tournament, he has been in the UK and he’s not even a regular with his club. He’s a very fine player but injuries are worrying him and he needs to work on that.

“I don’t believe in people talking about bribe and I have not experienced such allegations. I don’t believe in it,” Preko concluded.

Ghana is set to face Gabon in the final qualifying round for the 2015 African Youth Championship in Senegal which serves as the qualifying campaign for the 2015 World Youth Championship in New Zealand.