Osafo Marfo says corruption has destroyed our football

pulse-ghana admin

December 5, 2017 3:48 PM

Ghana's Senior Minister says corruption in Ghana football is what has led to its stagnation not lack of proper policy or other issues

Speaking at a forum as part of this year’s Anti-Corruption and Transparency Week, Honorable Yaw Osafo Marfo, who has earlier served as Sports Minister, spoke on what he used to do to prevent corruption in football during the years of 2005 and 2006 where he worked under the President Kufuor Administration.

“I have been Minister for Sports before, and it was during my time that Ghana qualified for the World Cup for the first time.

“One of the first things I did was to invite the match officials to my office because the league becomes important when people see fairness."

He then spoke on how corruption in the game had destroyed local football.

“You destroy the league of the country when people know that matches are being fixed. Corruption got so deep in football after 2010 that Ghanaians stopped being interested in the local league.

The experienced policy maker also went onto explain how corruption destroying local football has a negative ripple effect on the Ghana Black Stars.

“Corruption in the officiating of Ghana Premier League matches has had a very negative effect on our football, to the extent that local players hardly feature in the Black Stars call-ups these days.

“That is certainly not the best, as we used to get about half of the Black Stars from the local league, with most of them coming from Hearts, Kotoko, Olympics, Eleven Wise and a few others. And these players were very competitive and conquered Africa.”

Accra Hearts of Oak won the CAF Champions League and CAF Confederation Cup in 2000 and 2004. These were the last times Ghanaian clubs were to taste continental glory.

From then on it has been difficult for any club to get past the preliminary or group stages of the two major continental competitions in Africa.

The Honourable minister alluded that to corruption in football being the cause

“These teams also conquered Africa in their own right, but how are our teams doing in Africa these days? The winner of our league cannot even make it through the first round of the CAF competition.

“We must make sure that those who are guilty for these corrupt offenses are found out and punished accordingly.” He concluded

The Honourable minister’s remarks comes after a 2016/2017 Ghana Premier League season marred with match fixing allegations.

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