Some unpleasant truths | Sporting Goods 2019-06-05

Sports reports from Wednesday, June 5th, 2019

Source: Graphic.com.gh

2019-06-05

Two topics are sure to make headlines: children who take courses in unsuitable structures and old players of Black Stars who have experienced a difficult period.

We are in the season for both stories. The rains are here and the deficit of our infrastructure for the basic schools is still sadly exposed right now, so there will be stories about schools in leaking sheds.

It's time for the Africa Cup of Nations and the Black Stars to come together. There will be stories about the last time we won this competition and the ones that played at that time.

Both subjects, Black Stars and school buildings, are of great interest to me. Many people know this and, therefore, make sure you never miss any headlines on the state of the clbadrooms or Black Stars.

My love story with the Black Stars goes back a very long time. I first watched them at the age of 15 and never missed an opportunity to watch them. Between September 1967 and January 1982, I worked for what is now Graphic Communications Group Ltd. and followed closely all the drama surrounding the Black Stars.

I saw how sports administrators and governments dealt with players. I watched their games and I reported on some of them. I saw how much the officials and the ordinary Ghanaians loved the players.

I doubt that a Black Star player has ever paid for a bottle of beer, juice or food when he entered a bar or restaurant in this country. I can testify that even though I have already bought beer for two of the players in Accra. The two certainly had a lot more money than me, but it was like that at the time. We have venerated them. They were stars, they did what the stars of that time did, they behaved like stars and no one blamed them.

They have not been treated worse than their contemporaries from other parts of the world.

In 2006, when we finally managed to get to the World Cup in Germany, I was state minister and I paid my own plane ticket and match, my hotel and my transportation costs across Germany to observe and encourage the Black Stars. When the Black Stars traveled to South Africa in 2010, I bought tickets for all their matches from the group stage. I know a lot, a lot of Ghanaians who have followed the Black Stars with similar or even greater adoration.

During the debacle of the Black Star in Brazil in 2014, my devastation was total. Then I realized that I behaved like all those people who see the past as a rose and make us believe that horrible things only happen in the present.

How could I forget that money haggling has always been part of the Black Stars culture? How can I forget that in 1970, a certain Osei Kofi, known as Reverend Osei Kofi, had celebrated the Black Stars boycott of the AFCON competition in Sudan? In today's world, the situation would probably not have been different from that of Brazil 2014.

The myth

This myth has persisted according to which the old-time Black Stars sacrificed and loved Ghana more than us and played for nothing. Nothing is further from the truth and I do not know why sports journalists are reluctant to say so.

Of course, modern players earn much more than the players of old, but it's a global phenomenon. It is also true that some promises made in the heat of the moment have not always been kept, but I had hoped that these problems would be solved by the intervention of the l & # 39; former president John Dramani Mahama when he gave money to all former Black Star Survivors promises made by all previous governments. "

In August 2014, Mahama Ayariga, then Minister of Youth and Sports, presented a check for 1.7 million GH ¢ to the surviving members of the Black Stars who won the African Cup of Nations in 1963, 1965, 1978 and 1982.

Now I see a 5.58-inch video of an event in a church with three former Black Star players – Reverend Osei Kofi, John Naawu and Reverend Kofi Paré – circulating on social media. In this video, a certain prophet Emmanuel Badu Kobi states that the former players of the Black Stars are not taken into account and claims that they were given kettles after winning the cup.

I do not regret the check for 20,000 GH ¢ that this so-called prophet said that he gave the players and what the other members of the congregation would give too. But I find it scandalous that these three former players, two of whom are now Reverend ministers, stand before a congregation and be part of the vitriol and lies that came from this prophet.

If the former players did not intend to interrupt their very public benefactor and thus jeopardize the money that reaches them in the church, they have had a lot of time since then to make things clear. I am disappointed that they chose not to do it.

I know many retired teachers who live in scarcity. Blackmail of former Black Stars players is enough.

By: Elizabeth Ohene