Kwesi Nyantakyi, Don't Resign, The Sports Journalists Are Just Jealous

I have a hard time understanding how some Ghanains think dismissing Kwesi Nyantakyi as GFA President will improve our local league and that of our senior National team without analyzing why Ghana football is in a free fall. Is the GFA blameless for the poor state of our local league and that of the senior national team? No, they have to assume a portion of the blame not more than 25% of it. I will rather put most of the blame on our so called football Experts, the Sports Journalists in Ghana who sit on radio and show their dumb analysis on why our league is falling apart without even knowing what it is.

As a layman living in far away United States of America, watching and listening to what is going on in Ghana concerning our local league, I can tell readers that the reason why our league is not attractive is due to Player attrition because of poor salaries and it wouldn't even matter if you bring the best football administrator in the world without addressing the poor salaries we pay these Players some of whom take as low as GHc250 a month salary which most of the time are not even paid on time. How does this affect the league?

At the end of every league season, the winner of the goal King race and at least top ten players in the league leave for greener pastures in Europe and even in Africa to countries like Sudan and Tanzania. A club like Wa All Stars after winning the league lost some top players and that is why the team was walloped 3-1 in their opening match at Tamale by Al Ahli Tripoli.

I will not go into details how many good Players we have lost to clubs like T.P Mazambe who have used our Players to win club championships in Africa because they have an owner with deep pockets who pay players like Solomon Asante and his countrymen a living salary like $60,000-$100,000 a year. How do you expect a Player in Ghana to waste his time getting paid less that GHc5,000 a year which sometimes are not even paid on time when he can go to Sudan and earn like $40,000-$60,000 Okrah is earning and this is a first class football Player who can help Kotoko or Hearts to win Africa championship if we can afford his services.

How can we improve our league? The answer is money and the only way we can get money to pay decent wages for our Players is to attract the really rich Ghanaians like Paa Kwesi Nduom who is going to make Elmina Sharks maybe the most attractive club in Ghana in five years time. With his 15,000 capacity stadium and how he pays the Players even when they were not in the Premier league, very soon all the good Players in Ghana will start scrambling to get a spot in Elmina Sharks. We have some owners of Premier league clubs in Ghana without even assets of one million dollars and these people have no business owning teams when they can't afford to pay Player salaries. We need to set a minimum standard of at least Twenty million dollars ($20 million) for anybody willing to own a Premier league team. Since we don't have that many people with that kind of money interested in owning football teams, people should form partnerships to purchase premier league teams.

In America, before anybody can purchase or own a major sports team like in Baseball, Basketball, Football, America version or Ice Hockey team, the owners of the other clubs and the Commissioner for a particular sports will make sure the owner or owners have hundreds of millions of dollars before they approve you to buy a team and I think we need to do that in Ghana because most of the owners of teams in Ghana football have no business even owning colts team let alone a Premier league team. Look at what happened to New Edubiase team last season when they had to sleep at a school building in one of their last matches because the team could not afford a hotel room.

We might blame Kwesi Nyantakyi for not getting a company to sponsor the league last season but if I own a company, why should I waste my money sponsoring this league without marquee Players who will attract spectators into the stadium?

The Sports Journalists, especially those working for radio stations are to blame the most because they have whipped Ghanaians into frenzy believing that getting rid of Kwesi Nyantakyi will solve all the problems in Ghana football which is not true.

Ghana has not won the Afcon for the past 35 years, how long has Kwesi Nyantakyi been the GFA Boss that we have to blame him for that failure when he has been the GFA Boss for only the last twelve years?

Let any Sports Journalist tell me which GFA Boss has done better than Kwesi Nyantakyi, maybe Ohene Gyan in the 60's. Nyantakyi during his administration has qualified Blackstars to three world cups and won the under twenty world cup, the only Africa country to do that. Kwesi Nyantakyi deserve praises not this foaming of the mouth hatred we hear from especially the NHYIRA FM Sports casters and that Countryman Songo and his fawning supporters.

Who are we then to blame for the poor state of our football? GFA, Sports Journalists, Players and Spectators all have to accept part of the blame.

For GFA under Kwesi Nyantakyi, I will assign part of the blame for our local league for not finding owners like Paa Kwesi Nduom who have deep pockets to build their own stadiums worthy for Professional Players to play in instead of the poor dusty fields without proper walls these Players risk their careers playing on. As far as the Blackstars is concerned, we should not be employing somebody like Grant with that huge salary when Kwesi Appiah in my books is a better Coach than Grant if we compare Blackstarts record of the two.

The Journalists are the worst. You listen to them on the radio and you can feel their personal hatred for Nyantakyi and even the Players due to pure jealousy. Some of these Journalists instead of encouraging the Players invited into the Blaclstars camp will rather denigrate them about how they are bench Players for their respective clubs and they come to Ghana and misbehave or behaving like they are good players. You can feel just pure jealousy from these so called Journalists. Folks, don't buy this nonsense from these poor excuse of Journalists who are called Celebrities in Ghana when these Playe rs are away in Europe. When these Players come to Ghana on holidays and they attract citizens whilst they are being ignored, that is when you hear these 'FIRE WILL BURN THEM' Journalists and the JOE SIX PACKS who are worried about losing their girlfriends to these Players.

Now an advice to the Blackstars Players. Sometimes they deserve the criticism leveled against them especially when they demand outrageous bonuses. Their lack of patriotism sometimes baffles me. Most of these Players and all of them earn decent money playing for their clubs in Europe and when they start demanding even five thousand dollars per match when an average Ghanaian earns less than half of that amount in a whole year, then they court hatred for themselves. I will rather these Players as a team will agree to play for Ghana and leave it for the country to give them whatever we can afford. I will also suggest that no GFA Official should get the same amount of bonuses the Players get because that will influence how much we pay these Players.

What about the ordinary supporters? Sometimes these Supporters go to the extreme when a player makes a mistake on the field. A case in point is when spectators went to Captain Asamoah Gyan's mother house to attack her when he missed the penalty at the world cup, that was way over the bar.

The point I am trying to make is that, eliminating Kwesi Nyantakyi without proper diagnosis of what is ailing our football will not solve the problem and I don't see Nyantakyi alone as the problem that when we get rid of him will solve our problems.

The Sports Journalists are not doing our football any favors when their criticism of GFA, its Boss and the Players are based on pure jealousy and that is what I get when I listen to them on the radio.

Sammy the Sheriff

(SARPONG)