Medeama Sporting Club has threatened to withdraw from the ongoing CAF Confederation Cup after today’s group match against MO Bejaia of Algeria, if they fail to get a bailout.
The president of Medeama, Moses Armah, told the Graphic Sports yesterday that he arrived at that decision due to the financial difficulties facing the club.
“We’ve decided to withdraw from the competition after today’s match because help is coming from nowhere,’ Mr Armah declared in despair.
“The last away match we played against TP Mazembe cost us $70,000. Where am I going to get that money from if we don’t get help from elsewhere?” he lamented.
According to him the club is yet to receive its $150,000 appearance fee from CAF since qualifying for the group stage last month without any explanation from the organisers or the Ghana Football Association (GFA).
“As at now we’ve not heard from CAF and the GFA has also not told us anything about our appearance fees and the other benefits due us,’ Mospacka revealed.
He tried to hazard a guess by attributing Medeama’s plight to the GFA’s failure to meet a CAF deadline for the broadcast right for the group matches.
He was appalled by the manner in which the FA delayed in signing the broadcast with GTV on June 14, barely three weeks after the May 22 deadline.
He suspected that such an administrative lapse might have resulted in the withholding of Medeama’s appearance fee by CAF.
He further disclosed that the GFA’s negligence has attracted a $42,000 penalty from CAF as the cost of production for their home games.
According to hin the club spends between $15,000 to $20,000 anytime they play at home, not to talk of away matches.
He said, for instance, that the club had been catering for the airfares of the five match officials in their home games from the preliminaries to date.
‘For every home match, we pay the airfares of the match officials and also give each referee $750 and the Match Commissioner $800,” he noted.
Mospacka indicated that the Medeama coffers were further stretched recently when they were compelled to pay GHC13,000 as duty for the kit sent by CAF for their home matches.
As if that is not enough, the Medeama bankroller had to dole out quite a substantial amount to generate power at the Sekondi Stadium in Essipon to enable them to use the venue for their home games.
He stressed that the club’s headline sponsor, Gold Fields, had done its part by supporting them through the qualifiers, hence the need for the government, the GFA and other sponsors to come on board to help them through the competition.