According to Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, a former minister of youth and sports, the Black Stars players have to be held accountable for the 2014 World Cup controversy.
With just one point from three games, the senior national team was eliminated at the tournament’s group round.
The players threatened to boycott the match and demanded $100,000 apiece before to the final group game. In response to this ultimatum, the government set up a direct trip to Brazil in order to settle the dispute.
Afriyie Ankrah said in a ChannelOne TV interview that he was unfairly singled out for criticism.
He claimed that rather than addressing the true problems, people were making fun of him.
He spoke:
The biggest tragedy that happened to us was the way we handled the aftermath of the 2014 World Cup. After that World Cup, instead of the country focusing on the root causes of the issues, the focus was on me so it was all about me, me, me.”
“The root cause of the problem was that players insisted that they wanted ($) 100,000 appearance fee; the government said that we can only give you ($) 82,500 then the players said, if you don’t give us the money, we will not train so government had to buckle in. Then the players now said we don’t want a transfer, we want physical cash and so we were caught in a situation where we had to give them the cash and they refused to train twice and then they didn’t win to qualify for the next stage.
“So that was the root cause. When the commission was set up, instead of the commission focusing on that, the commission was focused on me.
“If there are issues and I take responsibility, am I a player, do I play football? Is it my duty to go and train and play ball? So where players have relegated their duty, they must also be called to account so that then became a problem.”
Due to the team’s poor performance, head coach Kwesi Appiah was fired by the Ghana Football Association (GFA).
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