By Paul Nicholson
January 2 – The Ghana FA (GFA) has repeated that it will be able to pay the $3.1 million money borrowed from the government once an official request for the funds is made.
At the World Cup last summer Ghanaian players refused to play unless they were paid their appreaance fees in advance. This lead to a stand-off between the FA and the players who feared that once the World Cup was over they would not see the money.
The situation was resolved when Ghana’s government loaned the FA the money and flew about £3 million in cash to Brazil to prevent the player mutiny.
Ghana ended up bottom of their group at the World Cup without winning a game. The government carried out an investigation into the saga with the end result being that coach Kwesi Appiah was sacked.
GFA president Kwesi Nyantakyi has maintained all along that the cash would be repaid according to the agreement with the government – essentially when the national association received its appearance fee money from FIFA.
£4.2 million of the loan has already been repaid. Government had pre-financed the payment of the Black Stars appearance fees during the 2014 World Cup after borrowing $4.2 million from the Bank of Ghana.
For the 2010 World Cup the Ghana FA struck a similar loan deal with government.
The players had initially requested a $120,000 fee for their appearance. The GFA supposedly agreed on $100,000 per player instead. However, the government only approved $82,500, which was communicated to the players as early as March. This sum was a 10% increase on the fee that the players received for representing their country at the 2010 world cup ($75,000).
Getting the players to take the field was not the only problem facing Ghana federation management. The investigation into their national team’s poor performance at the World Cup also uncovered discrepancies in the numbers of the supporter group that was officially sent to Brazil.
Instead of the expected 612 fans, which had official seats on chartered flights, 696 found their way across. The welfare committee subsequently catered for these extra fans. As the Minister of State, Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah stated: “We took care of all of them.”
The additional fans became further problematic when the time came to airlift the supporters back. Travel Matter, African Origin and Sports Tourism, and Kenpong Travel and Tours formed a consortium to pre-finance travel home for the supporters, to be reimbursed at a later date, but failed to comply with the manifest. They, allegedly, included their own supporters on the flight, to the exclusion of the government-sponsored supporters, who were left stranded in Brazil.
A number of Ghanaians sought asylum in Brazil.
Ghana have qualified for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations tournament that kicks off January 17. Ghana have won the tournament four times but not since 1982.
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