By Emmanuel Baah-Aboagye, Solar Fm, Dunkwa-On-Offin,
Follow me on twitter:@EmmaBaahAboagye
I have been thinking for years about developments in Ghana football and I still remain in wonderland because there is no end in sight for this cognitive exercise and expedition.
As an ardent fan and follower of football, I would do myself a great disservice to think that all is well. There is no doubt that Ghana is a country with the highest of passions for this sport - football. Unfortunately, we seem not to apply the best practices and standards to get the best out of the sport.
Who must I blame then for the seeming mess? Accusations cannot solve the problem but openly, consciously and admissibly conceding that our club football management is sick, to a greater extent, would surely guide and lead us to getting an antidote to these problems.
Yes! As a fan of the game, I have an unending romantic affair with European football just because of how they have realized that football is no more entertainment but scientifically business. European football has evolved and metamorphosed into a big time business and it is being seen as such with recent huge monetary investments made by private investors and the amount of money churned out in player transfer windows.
Back in Africa, I got a strong affection for the sport when Roger Milla, Cyrille Makanaky, Josef Antoine Belle, Thomas Nkono, Laurent Pokou, Rashid Yekini, Oman Biyik, Austin ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha, Abedi Ayew Pele, Joel Tielhi, Hossam Hassan, Kalusha Bwalya, etc. were in blistering form and displaying their talents to the world.
These were naturally gifted actors of the game, who made a case for African people both in Europe and in the diaspora. Like the product life cycle, they faced decline and extinction and that was history.
In Ghana, the sport has seen tremendous development relative to the dark ages when people started showing enthusiasm and affection and in the process producing a stream of football greats like the late Baba Yara, Addai Kyenkyenhene, Osei Kofi, Nii Darko Ankrah, Wilberforce Mfum, Abdul Razak, the late Emmanuel Quarshie, Edward Acquah, among others. Our generation has seen an array of stars, who have and are still playing at the highest level in Europe and who hitherto, had plied their trade in the local league.
Talk of the Ghana Football Association not doing much to help local football clubs makes me laugh my head off. This is because the FA cannot be wholly blamed for the current state of our football clubs. After all, the GFA does not superintend over the appointments of those who are entrusted with the management of the clubs. It is no secret that our football clubs from the Premier League, Divisions one, two and three are poorly managed, hence the status quo. All that our local football club administrators know how to do best is to sign and sell players, sack managers and appoint new ones and relegate other austerity measures that are critical to the forward march of their clubs to the background.
Taking a retrospective view at how we have administered our local football clubs, I personally think that we are own enemies given that we have not been proactive enough to scan the business and scientific side of football to our advantage.
It looks very worrying to hear some ‘astute’ football administrators and commentators scorn Asamoah Gyan for making a move to the Chinese Super League with the perceived thinking that China is not a football country and so Asamoah Gyan, as captain of the Black Stars, should have known better.
This is weird to say the least. Should Asamoah Gyan have come to Ghana because Ghana is a football country relative to China? Has any of such critics sat down to even find out why Shanghai SIPG made that move for Asamoah Gyan? Is Asamoah Gyan the only national team captain plying his trade in China? In what league was Asamoah Gyan playing when he started registering double figures in goal scoring terms in a season for the Black Stars? At what point in time would the critics expect Asamoah Gyan to join the Chinese League?
At age 29, should it be after winning the FIFA World Cup with Ghana or after winning the UEFA Champions League with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus, PSG, Manchester United etc.? Marcos Tardelli Martins and Paulinho are among Brazilians who play for their national team and yet play in the Chinese League for Shandong Luneng and Guangzhou Evergrande respectively. My last checks informed me that the Chinese League has featured over 628 other foreign nationals and certainly Asamoah Gyan has not been the first and would not be the last. The Chinese may have realized that there is a problem marketing their brand of league to the international community and may have strategically decided to solve it this way. Football is now not for fun, rather it is for money. Period!
Again, it looks quite disturbing to see how some of our local football club administrators sit unconcerned to allow smart business people to use their registered logos and emblems to manufacture merchandises and sell to fill their pockets. Go to match venues of Kotoko, Hearts of Oak, AshGold and the rest and one would see this practice unquestionably being perpetrated there in the full glare of authorities of these clubs.
The first thing that comes to mind is that are these football authorities not shown how to monetize our football seeing these developments? They do not see anything wrong here but are always quick to blame the FA for their debilitating financial woes.
The Ghana Football Association can negotiate for the best of deals for the league but it is contingent on the clubs to put in place workable, realistic and scientific support policies to augment the efforts of the other stakeholders. One sure way of doing this, is to soundly manage merchandise. Let me be quick to borrow the late President Mills’ (may his gentle soul rest in perfect peace) mantra of “dzi wo fie as3m”.
A case in point is how clubs like Manchester United became number one in merchandise sales in 2014 on the club’s website in the UK, regardless of the fact that the club was still suffering from the Sir Alex Ferguson hangover. Leeds United, a one-time Premier League side but now a Championship side occupied the 7th spot on the merchandise log and same cannot be side of our division one sides back in Ghana.
Sometime back, I remember being denied access to downloading a logo from the club’s website when I am able to do that with relative ease as far as Kotoko, Hearts of Oak and the likes are concerned. For me, that should be a worry to us all as football-crazy people.
Chelsea in England earned a staggering sum of £98,999,554, for winning the English Premier League title in 2014/15 season composed of £24.9m ‘merit’ money, £19.98m ‘facility fees’ for appearing in 25 live TV matches, plus equal shares of the domestic TV deal (nearly £22m), overseas TV deals (£27.8m) and commercial income from the leagues sponsors, such as Barclays (£4.4m). I am not sure that this sum would be enough for the club in the 2015/16 season but the club’s business side would put it in a better stead for the future.
How often do our clubs unveil players and sell their replicas or are they waiting for the FA or central government to do so? Real Madrid was able to recoup a substantial amount of money from the acquisition of Cristiano Ronaldo from Manchester United on the day of his unveiling and that in itself was business.
For this reason, clubs in Ghana must not recruit players for the gallery of it but must work hand-in-hand with their support base and even conduct extensive study to know who their supporters or fans would love to see at the clubs at certain points in time so that replicas of such players can be put out there on sale to maximize profit to augment their finances.
I understand B.A United bagged a disappointing GHC84.00 as gate proceeds from its league match against Inter-Allies at the Accra Sports Stadium. Regardless of the reasons, I believe that our clubs are almost all at fault when it comes to marketing their matches.
It is done the crude way and that has to change. The Ghana FA does not have to market the matches for them. The proliferation of media in Ghana has not been taken advantage of by our administrators. They have to damp the thinking of doing the media a favour by availing themselves to them when needed on their programmes and seek to optimally utilize the opportunities given them for the betterment of the clubs they are representing and working for.
It is high time we took a critical look at the people we appoint to run our football clubs here in Ghana. Kurt Okraku of Dreams Fc fame, Kudjoe Fianoo of AshGold fame, Gerald Ankrah of Hearts of Oak fame, Neil Armstrong Mortagbe (despite his short stay at Hearts) among others are some shining examples of contemporary football administrators, whose knowledge of how best football administration is done is without doubt.
Another area that we have not fully utilized in monetizing our football is how untroubled and unconcerned we seem to portray with the visible disregard for the value we have attached to the spaces of the walls (if any) of match venues in this country.
This is almost generally a problem for all clubs spanning from the lower divisions to the upper divisions. Yes! There should be walls to fend off football “encroachers” from watching matches for free and to provide security as well. However, judging from the business side of football, this is one area that we can optimally take advantage of.
Visit match venues of some lower and upper division sides and this claim of mine would be confirmed. The corporate world is open to be positively exploited for the betterment of the lots of these clubs but that is what we have failed to do. I would not hold brief and sound defensive for the Ghana FA but the moment there is a thought of the formation of a football club on the part of anyone, then there should be accompanying measures to make that club self-sustaining.
It would look absolutely absurd to start playing a game without a fair knowledge and appreciation of the rules that govern it.
Corporate Ghana does not exist as charitable entities, rather they exist for profit and would chance on any vehicle that would help them get there. Football club managers must scan the corporate environment and take advantage of the wide range of opportunities that are available to the clubs.
It is for no reason, other than business that multi-national companies like Puma, Nike, Adidas, Samsung, Emirate Airlines, DHL, etc. have pacts with renowned football brands in the world. The point is that we have failed to make our football clubs known to corporate Ghana. What is my justification for this my claim? How many of our Premier League clubs have a more resourced marketing team working for them?
How many lower and upper division clubs in Ghana have fully operational websites and other social media outlets? How many of our football brands here have realistic strategic plans in motion? How many football clubs in Ghana have training kits sponsors? How on earth did Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Leicester City, Newcastle United, among others rename their stadia, if not for business purposes? How many football clubs in Ghana can boast of their own football stadia or are we expecting the Nyantakyi-led FA to construct stadia for our clubs? These are the questions of a bemused mind!
I believe that by the time one finds answers to these inquisitions of mine, I would not be far from right. We should work towards presenting juicy but workable, realistic and ‘honest’ business plans and proposals to corporate Ghana and see the results that come up. We always want to reach the heights of the established orders but we have failed to learn how they evolved from where they were some time ago. Let us stop thinking that football is still a form of entertainment and malign ourselves with the business aspect of it.
One sure way of getting the fans to the stadia is getting started ourselves and we would all see and know that the FA is not wholly to blame for the messy state of our clubs. It is only when the clubs empower themselves and gird their loins that they can resist anything thrown at them by the FA.
I end this long write-up with a quote from the most successful investor of the 20th century, Warren Buffet,“someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” A word to the wise…….!