Stay in the Division One if you can’t meet the Club Licensing requirements – Baah-Nuakoh to clubs

The Chairman of the Ghana Football Association (GFA) Club Licensing Committee, Dr. Kwame Baah-Nuakoh has said that clubs that do not meet the club licensing requirement should be demoted to the lower division.

Majority of Ghanaian clubs failed to meet the club licensing requirements with most of these clubs given a conditional license to operate before the start of the 2019/20 football season.

Dr. Baah-Nuakoh said strict adherence to the club licensing regulations may see a lot of clubs banned or prevented from using their various venues and stadiums for games.

He advised club administrators to consider merging with others and also those that do not meet the requirements should consider staying in the lower leagues.

“We have gotten to a point where we would have to advise those who don’t have the means to run a club in the premier league professionally to wait in the lower divisions until they can”, he said in an interview.

“Everyone wants to be called chairman so instead of merging with other clubs to have one big professional club running effectively, we have a lot of ‘small’ clubs running under various individuals who cannot meet the standards. So it makes it difficult implementing the licensing rules”, he added.

Former GFA Normalisation Committee president, Dr KofiAmoah, in an interview also mentioned that Ghana football can only develop if the Club Licensing Board ensure its regulations are adhered to by the clubs.

“Football has been in Ghana for over a hundred years and one must ask why our football is down there. Football is run by laws and regulations and we refused to accept that. It is clear in the club licensing statutes that to get a license to operate a football club, you must have A, B,C,D. None of that happens and then it continues”.

“The facilities are not there, the administrative structures are not there and the capacity to run a football club properly are not there and we continue to go on."

“If we want Ghana football to rise, we must understand that the laws and regulations of the FA are there for a purpose. They are there to help the association succeed so any club or person that refuses to abide by these regulations must be punished. If we choose not to abide by these statutes and rules, our football will never rise”, he said.