Soccer News of Tuesday, 21 January 2003

Source: ..

Indiscipline is cause of nation's poor performance

A business executive has blamed the mal-performance of the Ghanaian national soccer teams on indiscipline on the part of members of the playing body, and not the calibre of coaches.

Opoku-Agyemang Prempeh, Managing Director of Lakayana Company, an Engineering and Construction Consortium, explained that changing of coaches or replacement of the Minister was therefore not the solution to the woes of the national teams.

Prempeh was addressing a meeting of "Disciplinary Clubs", formed under the auspices of the Centre for Moral Education (CEMED) in Kumasi on Monday. The meeting was held to discuss the problems indiscipline poses to the society and strategies to be adopted by the clubs to help instil discipline in their players.

Prempeh traced the indiscipline that has engulfed the national football teams to division amongst the players, arrogance and struggle for superiority and recognition amongst the playing body.

Apart from player-indiscipline, the inability of the authorities to sufficiently motivate the players was also a contributory factor to the downward trend of our soccer, he added.

To address the problems, Prempeh strongly suggested the evolvement of measures which would visit punitive sanctions on any player found to have misconducted himself. He also appealed to co-operate bodies to begin to invest more in soccer by taking up the role of sponsors and also providing the requisite logistics to the national soccer teams.