It is worth commending the GFA and the league managers for steering the season to an end. It would even be disingenuous to withhold praise when it is deserved and, on this occasion, there is also ample evidence authenticating fine improvement for example in the quality of medals given to league winners Medeama.
The GFA was ridiculed two seasons ago over the kind of medals it handed to earlier winners of the GPL. They were substandard. They got better last season. In what FA communicators call “continuous improvement” this season’s medals are nicer. Some commentators have even called for the recall of the medals given in recent seasons.
Thus, while my commentary on the medals points to steady progress, my primary point is still that the GPL would be better if the FA showed better interest in its administration and standards. Public interest in the league would rise if close attention were paid to the competition. No one should be content with the snail, if not tortoise pace of growth of the GPL. Take for instance the issue of prize money.
Presently, the GPL winner takes home a meagre US$26,000 which is an insult. This is insulting because it does not come anywhere close to what clubs put in the competition, travelling nationwide to play, accommodating, feeding, and paying players and coaching staff besides supplying vital care like treating injuries and other health-related issues.
Leagues prize money all over in the world do not meet the cost clubs incur yet they are attractive. Ours is not but we find ourselves in a system where the FA, along with state actors deem it conscionable to expend funds earned from the Black Stars’ World Cup participation in a manner that makes you wonder if it is a taboo to invest a bit of the millions of dollars in the GPL.
We spent around US$5million at the Qatar 2022; saved about US$3million according to the Youth and Sports Minister, Mustapha Ussif. What proposal does the GFA have for the government to give a fraction of this money to the GPL? After four FIFA World Cups, earning by conservative figures, US$35million, what do we have to show, no matter how small, as a pointer to the GPL’s development?
The GFA President, Kurt Okraku’s manifesto talked about a world cup benefit fund, which pledged to give “35 percent of the World Cup benefit fund” to the GPL clubs. What has happened to that? It is high time the GFA worked hard to build proper interest in the GPL and also increase the prize money. As it stands now, several things put some people off the GPL and the prize money issue is one.