Minister of Youth and Sports Mustapha Ussif
The Ghana Football Associations has distanced itself from the $25million national team budget announced by the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
Henry Asante Twum, the Communications Director of the Ghana Football Association says that the FA did not prepare the budget and has no idea how it was generated by the Ministry.
He explained in a Peace FM interview that when the FA engaged the ministry on preparations for the Black Stars’ upcoming qualifiers issues of funds were not discussed.
“Let me say that FA has not submitted any budget to the ministry that we should be given $25million or $50million. When we met the Minister, we discussed means of qualifying for the world cup and obviously there is money involved,” he said.
Henry Asante Twum, however, sought to justify the $25million budget, explaining that sound funding is a huge factor in achieving success.
Citing the recent success of Manchester City and Chelsea, Asante Twum noted that success in football thrives on investment and if the country wants to achieve excellence, it must invest.
“Even the big countries … A typical example is what is happening. Without money, you can’t go anywhere. Today, Chelsea and Man City have reached the Champions League final. If you check the amount Manchester United spent on players before getting to the final of the Europa League final, clearly you can see that you can’t go anywhere without money,” he said.
He also advised that the government must be strategic with its investment in the World Cup as it could fetch the country huge benefits.
“If you want to go to the World Cup, there must be a project. It’s a project because if you spend and you can qualify, you don’t qualify and come back empty-handed.
“Just by qualifying and your group stage participation alone, you get almost $9million, you’ve already recouped half of your investment. If you get to the next stage, you enjoy $2million more. Depending on how you progress to the final, you stand to earn about $30million”.
Minister of Youth and Sports, Mustapha Ussif came under criticism after he announced that government will need $25million for the AFCON and World Cup assignments.
“The budget we have done is not only for Black Stars. It is for all our national team activities from now till 2022. We have 8 World Cup qualifiers, the CHAN team will be playing qualifiers, the women’s team as well, and we have to participate at the AFCON, and if we qualify for the world cup, we will participate there as well,” he told Citi TV.
“We have U-17, U-20, U-23 and the senior national teams and the same for the women and all these teams have tournaments to play. We have done estimates for all our national teams and we think that we need about $25 million to cater for all their expenses”, he added.