Thumps up, Tony Baffoe's PFAG

Tony Baffoe mooted the PFAG idea 

I have always insisted that, the various entities connected or related to club football development in our country have either been sleeping or aren’t doing much to ensure the proper growth of our football clubs. Again, it’s either that, football clubs in the country lack qualified personnel and resources to champion their development or that, the environment within which they operate doesn’t offer them opportunities successfully grow or thrive.

That partly explains why domestic football in Ghana isn’t what pertains elsewhere. It isn’t just about the Premier League Board (PLB) and its affiliate the Ghana Football Association (GFA) not doing more to ensure the development of the domestic league; it’s also and has always been about club owners and managers lacking the capacity to work professionally for growth.

I won’t mention any club as an example except perhaps WAFA. Whether it’s about the day to day management or administration; player recruitment, coaching, marketing and sponsorship; media and public relations; most of our clubs – even at the Premier League level haven’t had or employed the best, professional ways of doing things for a long time although I have to admit that, some are now making little progress.

That’s why for instance in the past, certain clubs could have 50 senior team players with no formidable youth side; no defined player development and performance policy. As a result, every season, some of these clubs bought and transferred players anyhow thereby creating serious and often embarrassing difficulties relative to the management of their players.  

For a club that could register 50 to 60 players for season, the payment of players’ salaries was definitely going to be hard in the face of low gate proceeds, absence of sponsorship or indeed sustainable means of generating revenue. Players generally felt frustrated every season and their hunger for less-fancied and in some cases non-existent lucrative deals in the Arab world, Asia and Europe grew stronger.

So where monthly salaries and other remuneration doesn’t come, it’s naturally hard if not impossible to think of investment or saving part of your meagre salary as a player in Ghana. It was good that, the GFA recently put a ceiling on the number of players (30) Premier League clubs could for example register in a season and from my observation and interaction with club owners and administrators, not only has that GFA directive, which they complied with, enabled clubs to keep sizeable squads; it has also given them the chance to better manage their players even if they don’t have adequate resources to pay them well or develop them.

The summary of my argument in this write-up is simply that, club football management needs to be given more attention. Deep thinking and good planning must go into decisions taken at the management and Board rooms of clubs not only to give our clubs attractive looks on the outside but to also make the life of their players better than what has been the case.

To some degree, this is the reason I commend ex-Black Stars player, Tony Baffoe and his Professional Footballers Association of Ghana (PFAG) team, who by all considerations, have been taking little yet important steps to help our players. For those who don’t know, the PFAG is “a union which mainly focuses on sustaining and protecting the interest of all professional footballers their player career and beyond”.

At press time, the PFAG were about to launch the "Insurance and Life after Football Fund", an initiative designed to deal constructively with the plight of our footballers especially after they have stopped playing. The launch was scheduled to take place at Alisa Hotel, Accra yesterday.

 A statement from the PFAG said: “The insurance package is designed to cover players for accidental deaths, critical illness and general accidents suffered by players on the field of play”. If this programme isn’t one of the things players here need, then I have absolutely no idea any example of the worthy things we would want to upgrade the lives of our players.

The PFAG and their collaborators deserve praise for their effort. I can only hope that, they will receive appropriate support from the various clubs and the GFA to carry on with their agenda.