Asante Kotoko management member David Obeng Nyarko says the President of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Kurt Okraku can’t do enough to mitigate player exodus in the Ghanaian domestic league.
According to the Porcupine Warriors’ Brands and communications manager, the former MTN FA Cup Committee chairman, simply does not believe in the “philosophy
This, he believes would go a long way to hurt the Ghana Premier League since almost all top talents within a particular season, exit the league for abroad to continue their respective football career.
Just recently, the Ghanaian league was hit with another massive blow as Accra Hearts of Oak star Daniel Afriyie Barniel was transferred to Swiss Super League side FC Zurich with Bechem United first choice goalie Iddrisu Abdulai also moving to Azam FC in Tanzania.
According to a CIES Football Observatory report in 2022, Ghana was ranked as the number one exporter of professional footballers in Africa.
Despite most Ghanaian clubs generating a lot of transfer fees, it has affected the standard of the Ghana Premier League.
Most promising talents are sold out just after a season and clubs unable to keep hold of their top players.
“The FA president doesn’t believe in the philosophy of keeping players,” said Obeng Nyarko speaking on Akoma FM.
“Statistics show that Inter Allies and Dreams are the leading clubs that sell players in the last 10 years.
“The Brazilian league is one of the top leagues in the world yet player exodus is very high in their country but what they do is that their players leave at a high price and the revenues from the sales are used for recruiting great and matured players, so they always have popular names and quality players in the league.
“Muntari recently came to play in the Ghana premier league and complained bitterly about the state of our pitches. Most professional Ghanaian players would have loved to play in the local league before retiring but due to the nature of our pitches they opt to retire straight away.
The former Bofoakwa Tano FC boss, however, called for the establishment of an Academy to help groom Ghanaian players well so they can attract huge transfer money in the future.
“We should build our academy, and develop the players well so we can sell them for a huge price.” He concluded.
Meanwhile, the FA President in April 2022 speaking on the issue on how the Ghana FA can curtail player exodus in the country in an interview with GTV Sports, stated it is a complicated matter.
“It is a very complicated matter to be honest, we are talking about the migration of the players. Generally speaking, transfer revenue is a key revenue stream in football this is what we need to know,” he said.
“In the western world it remains a key revenue stream whether in England, Portugal, in Germany it is the key revenue stream”.
“In the South Americas it is a much bigger revenue stream same is applicable in Ghana so clubs will forever rely on transfer revenue to feed club operations. And once there is movement of players it becomes difficult to say the player can’t move,” he added.
