Mr Benson T. Baba, President of the Ghana Olympic Committee, said the Ghana Football Association (GFA) must be granted full autonomy to move Ghana football forward.

Speaking to the GNA on Tuesday, Mr Baba said if the GFA is divorced from the Ministry of Youth and Sports it will be more responsive to challenges facing the development of the sport.

He said an autonomous GFA would be able to adopt aggressive marking strategies to generate revenue to prosecute its programmes instead of looking up to government to fund every little competition.

The GOC president said "football being the passion of the nation" should be managed to cater for itself and make profit, which should be ploughed back into the provision of facilities and the prosecution of youth programmes to lay a solid foundation for development.

Mr Baba said it is common knowledge that football takes the chunk of the Sports Ministry's budgetary allocation thereby stifling the development of other disciplines, adding that the trend must be checked to give the lesser sports a new lease.

He said the GFA could secure sponsorship deals for the Black Stars and other national soccer teams to cover their jerseys, kits and allowances as well as travel expenses.

To achieve this, Mr Baba said multiple sponsors could be sought to identify with individual members of the national teams while the GFA compensates the companies with regular publicity and advertisements.

"We can take a cue from Jamaica whose 1998 World Cup squad was sponsored by 22 corporate bodies, each picking the bills of one player."

He said players' wages in the local league have risen considerably in the last three years and wondered why most clubs still play in the premier league with plain jerseys and thereby deny themselves additional revenue.

"Branded jerseys generate a lot of revenue for football clubs world wide and it is high time our clubs made use of the opportunity," he said.

Mr Baba said the production and sale of club souvenirs and other branded products must be controlled so that revenue accruable from them goes to the clubs and not into the pockets of individuals.