FA Tackles Taboo Subject Today

The Ghana Football Association (GFA) would today sit to discuss one of the most difficult and controversial subjects that any association could be tasked with.

The GFA at its management board meeting this evening would attempt to bring the raging row between Asante Kotoko, Charles Taylor and Accra Hearts of Oak to an end. But as members of the board themselves concede, this would be one hell of a meeting.

Hearts are demanding that the GFA bring Kotoko to book for taking their player away from them. The Phobians insist that the Kotoko interim management committee has acted wrongly in its attempt to sign on Taylor who is considered the best player in Ghana by some distance.

Hearts told the GFA in a letter that Kotoko had acted wrongly and urged the football controlling body to put the situation right. The GFA has been slow in acting, but management board member Sylvester Mensah told Radio Gold that the association would act on the matter today.

He explained that the GFA could not discuss the issue on Monday as planned because of fresh evidence that emerged from the various factions involved.

They were in the form of documents from the prime actors in the whole saga, Charles Taylor, Hearts of Oak and Taylor's personal manager, Jonathan Laryea.

Taylor's correspondence concerned his stated desire to play for Kumasi Asante Kotoko. In the said letter which Hearts claimed was forged by Kotoko, the player thanked Hearts for giving him the chance to serve the club for three years but in which he went on to plead that he had made an unequivocal decision to play for Asante Kotoko.

Strange thing is that even at the time when Taylor was writing the letter, he had signed a three-year contract extension with Hearts and had collected, according to Hearts, a sum of ?50 million for that.

His manager, Jonathan Laryea, however, argues that the said contract is invalid because he was not party to the agreement. Laryea insists that by an agreement he signed with Hearts during those protracted negotiations that took Taylor to Hearts from Olympics, he must be party to any agreement for it to hold.

Hearts are contending that board secretary Ernest Thompson says Laryea is misunderstanding the whole issue.

The Phobians who are preparing for the first round of the African Champions League first leg qualifier against Togolese champions, AS Duannes at the Accra Stadium on Sunday, have attempted desperately to brush the Taylor issue to the background but it just won't go away.

After Kotoko interim management committee secretary, Yaw Boafo, partially admitted that his club was adopting the wrong approach in the Taylor saga while still asking Hearts to be flexible, Thompson weighed in with his own comments and what appeared to be Hearts' own official position on the matter.

Boafo said, "even though we (Kotoko) might not have approached this correctly, I think Hearts must consider the interest of Taylor and grant him his wish. The player has made it clear it is Kotoko he wants to play for, and no other club.

We are prepared to talk and I am pleading with Hearts to let us talk. We pay them what they are due and the player becomes ours."

Boafo also suggested Ghana football would be the ultimate loser if Hearts kept to their present position. "Don't forget that Charles Taylor is a national star and we all saw what he is capable of when Ghana played Rwanda. It is also important, given the tension between Hearts and Kotoko, that we don't shoot up tension unnecessarily because we don't want another May 9. Hearts must just respect the interest of the player and grant him the move he wants. It looks as though now Hearts are saying that even if you won't play for us, you won't play for anybody".

Hearts' reaction was predictable. Ernest Thompson in a swift reaction on Joy FM asked the inevitable question: Who measures the ultimate interest and whose interest must be respected in this case? Plus who must make a compromise? Definitely not Hearts, from Thompson's tone.

He said: "Some of the points raised by the Kotoko secretary are unfortunate. In fact if you listened to him carefully, he conceded that Kotoko might have used the wrong procedure but that Hearts should consider the player's interest and let him ago. First of all, the procedure he is talking about is registration and a player must be properly registered for you so once he accepts that they used the wrong procedure, and then it means the player cannot register for them."

He also speaks of the interest of the player. How do you measure that? Do you measure that based on only what the player says or on based on the interest of all the other parties and, in this case, Hearts of Oak?

Hearts officials have tried hard pushing the Taylor subject to the countdown in the run up to their African champions league game on Sunday. It is about the smartest thing they have done, given the huge interest the subject has generated.

Officials have urged players to forget about the young man who has for almost a year now been the lifeblood of Hearts. Many Hearts die-hard followers see Sunday's game not only as a chance to redeem the club's image in African clubs competition after two miserable years, but also as an opportunity to bury Taylor for the time being.

As one official put it "Africa is worth one million dollars, how much is Taylor worth? There is no competition. We would take care of Africa, the law would take care of Taylor."

They would hope it starts today with the GFA.