The need to regulate managerial structures in Ghana football

By Richard Avornyotse - GNA Sports Desk

Accra, May 3, GNA - The game of football has grown beyond offering weekend entertainment and respite to fatigued minds and their associates. It is now serious business, with footballers scrambling among the highest earners in the world.

Its new status as one of the biggest money-spinners globally has induced all manner of people into its management and organisation. The clubs, which used to be the only managers and administrators locally, now share or concede such responsibilities to a host of others whose interest in the game is growing by the day.

The supervision and organisation of football in Ghana has recently witnessed an evolution, which has installed new faces, mostly from the GHALCA fraternity into the newly structured Executive Committee. Most of the members had been "Accra Representatives" of Clubs or have had a kind of romance with one club or the other, thus giving them the platform to recognise the modern demands of the game, vis-a-vis, player welfare in terms of discovery and development. It is common knowledge that in Ghana some of the players are so impoverished that they only blossom if they get support from benevolent members of their communities or from well to do team officials who invest in them.

Some promising players might not realise their full potentials because of lack of support. Transporting themselves from their homes to and from the various training grounds becomes so relatively luxurious that they give up very easily.

Sometimes, even feeding becomes difficult for some prospective footballers, even though they might possess all the characteristics that make great footballers.

In some circumstances, Ghanaian footballers lack the requisite capacity to read and understand texts in relation to their contracts and are therefore conned by greedy team officials who hand them long-term contracts and pay them peanuts for their services.

With such a dossier of multifarious difficulties that our budding footballers face, it is rather unfortunate that the new-look Ghana Football Association (GFA) has not deemed it expedient to realise and regularise the functions of supportive personnel to encourage credible Ghanaians to channel some of their resources into player development. Under the aegis of FIFA, the game has admitted technocrats who oversee the well- being of players and coaches by acting as their agents and managers, making the necessary mobility contacts and negotiating the purses on behalf of the players.

With the GFA now out of the corridors of political control, a la FIFA decision, it behoves on members to regulate the functions of managers and agents of players and coaches so as to make football administration more professional.

Agents and managers have their roles to play in the development of players and their legitimacy can advance the cause of footballers and coaches, who sometimes are denied contracts but are allowed to work at the quirk of their employers where they are fired at random without recourse to contractual obligations.

Professionalism means that the organisation and functioning of football must be done in a manner worthy of high standards and a situation where fair minded persons who can negotiate on behalf of people whose performances give name to the sport are not recognised in Ghana, is to say the least unfortunate.

It is a fact that many Ghanaians are performing managerial functions and their activities are earning positive results in the development of footballers and coaches.

A lot more players need support from well meaning individuals who would provide them with kits and stipends and do the necessary contacts that would get them out of oblivion onto the big stage for recognition, fame and wealth.

The ultimate winner, under such circumstances would be Ghana football. Many more talents who would otherwise have remained untapped would surface from all nooks and crannies of the country and league clubs and national team selectors would find solace in their stock. Legalising managerial and agency positions in Ghana football will also address another pressing issue, which has also been the bane of Ghana football - the sizes of our players.

Undoubtedly, most managers are enticed to invest in players who have the build and physique to attract foreign scouts and giving them a lee way, through the GFA statutes to perform their duties would mean a lot of he guys coming into football to augment the diminutive sizes of our ball players.

Also, giving managerial and agency positions legitimacy would magnetise a lot of people into player development and widen the scope of business in the game.

This is the time for the GFA to regulate managerial structures in Ghana as a positive step towards true professionalism.

FIFA has its rules and conditions for those who want to be FIFA agents and it will be in the interest of the game if the GFA would come out with its rules to regulate managers and agents as necessary limbs of soccer development in the country. Keep shooting!