Investing in Ghana football unwise - Saddick Adams

Head of Atinka Media Village Sports, Saddick Adams, has said the Senior National Team, the Black Stars do not deserve the amount of monies doled out to them during the recent 2019 AFCON tournament.

A clearly worked up Saddick held that per the team's pre-tournament preparation, the Black Stars knew very well within themselves that they cannot win the AFCON trophy but deceived Ghanaians by raising people's hopes unnecessarily with all kinds of messages.

“Indeed Black-Stars has become a cash cow and investing in Ghana sports especially football is a wrong venture, because winning a tournament is not about luck and money. Rather a lot of preparation and discipline is needed which our authorities sadly refused to pay attention to,” he said.

Ghana’s dream of ending a 37-year wait for a trophy was ended via penalty shootout defeat to Tunisia in the Round of 16.

Sports Minister, Isaac Asiamah on Wednesday appeared before Parliament to render account on how much was expended on the disappointing outing.

The Minister disclosed that US$6,365,033.84 was budgeted for the tournament with a colossal amount of US$4, 564, 352.00 being spent on the training tour up until the team exited the AFCON at the round of 16 stage. The remaining 1. 7 million dollars will be returned to the state.

The Minister also mentioned players and officials of the Black Stars bagged a whopping $1,489,432 million for winning just one game at the AFCON.

But some have questioned the wisdom in budgeting US$6,3 million for a tournament that has 4.5 million allocated for the eventual winner.

Speaking on UTV’s ‘Adekye Nsroma’ morning programme, ‘Sports Obama’ as he popularly called, urged government to enact legislation that will peg monies for the Black Stars at a particular threshold and not countenance any of their selfish monetary demands.

“As a nation, we should be bold enough to tell the players our mind on the capacity of things we can do for them and not allow them [Black Stars] to go demanding from government what they know is above their pay-grade,” he fumed.

Whiles wondering why Ghana should go in for loans from foreign entities just to meet the demands of the Black Stars when some of these countries pay less amount of monies as incentives to their footballers, the Sports Journalist called on government to ensure that budget meant for such tournaments must be publicly disclosed or even served to parliament before it kick-starts.

"For the record, most of the well-structured football countries start paying their national teams winning bonuses from the semi-final stage and not at the group stages as Ghana normally does....and at least Parliament should be briefed to review the budget before it is released to sports authorities,” he added.