Former Black Stars skipper C.K. Akonnor says the unbridled demands by players of the Black Stars has been the bane of the team, saying the issue has reached alarming levels and needs to be curtailed at a point.
Even though he admitted money was a key factor for his generation, these days the money demanded by players as incentives was very huge and disturbing.
In an interview with the Graphic Sports in Accra on the sidelines of the recent two-day retreat of eminent football administrators, the retired football star and coach argued that Ghana missed an opportunity to make it big at the World Cup due to unresolved monetary issues.
The former Wolfsburg player said “now there is monetary (sic) in the business and it comes with bigger problems” which need to be solved.
Akonnor who captained the national team from 2004 to 2008, said the problem had given the Stars a bad image and was the root cause of all the challenges that Ghana encountered at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
Ghana’s campaign at the just-ended World Cup ended ignobly at the group stage where they placed bottom of Group G with only a point, a situation which GFA president Kwesi Nyantakyi attributed to “the money, money craze” among the players.
Akonnor said although his era witnessed some level of indiscipline, the hefty financial rewards to players these days was “outrageous”.
The 40-year-old former Accra Hearts of Oak coach lauded the move to organise the soccer retreat, saying it would help identify the solutions to football in the country and expressed the that hope that the recommendations if implemented would help Ghana make progress.
Akunnor, who was in Brazil as one of Ghana’s ambassadors to support the national team stated that several other reasons contributed to Ghana’s poor performance and indicated that they should be identified with appropriate remedies prescribed.
He asked Ghanaians to learn a lesson from what happened in Brazil and return to the drawing board to see what we did wrong and correct the mistakes.
