Ghanaian footballers need education

Is it possibly illiteracy or sheet dumbness? Sorry if anyone is offended but I mean it. Walking in the street of Accra, it is just easy to identify a footballer with just a glance. Pants down, smaller shirts and hideous haircuts like they are all a footballer needed and it’s even more annoying when they are in the local league. The bible verse, ‘By their fruits ye shall know them,’ is well being applied by these players just, of course, they are all not Christians.

I was considered odd in most of the clubs I played for because I was mostly in trousers and long sleeves and, perhaps always reading novels and newspapers. They called me VIASAT ONE by the way. But in my mind I always pitied them, not because I was smart and they were not, but because some were extremely gifted and the only thing they were missing was the essence of education and how it could influence their game. 

Now let’s touch on some problems I noticed.

Footballers: A friend of mine always said the good players were those in the house forgetting they had to get a descent haircut to get a good manager. This is ridiculous, but rhetorically makes sense. 

I can also say this for a fact that the local players have very little importance for social media. They only use it for finding girls not giving any concern to branding. No wonder, there is no single local player on any of our billboards in the country. 

Football is more than a sports, it’s an art and until our players are tuned to that nothing good will come out of our local league. There should be strict educational component to our sports like it is done in the U.S.A for basketball to help discover their full potential, business included. 

It’s clear we play football in this country because the uneducated uses that as an escape route with the hope of one day becoming a professional. The rich also sees that as the perfect opportunity to enhance wealth. A sport is nature, a gift and any inhabitant should see that first and the rest will follow.

Secondly, you tend to wonder how well the local players know their body. It’s all about running along the beaches morning and evening, putting in many hours of training when they need rest. 

They eat  anything at all they find available in the name of poverty. It’s not acceptable. 

Again, you wonder how many of them cared about health teachings because in my division one days, any injury around your hips, towards your pelvis area, was called groin and the ones on your calf and behind your thighs were always muscle pulls. This misguided information has led most players into self-medication when indeed, they have no idea what the problem really is.

Self-medication is one serious and common problem among local players. With this problem, I cannot blame them much because it of the lack of health professionals at the clubs. 

At times watching the local league is just pathetic. Upon all the physical training, the players sometimes look like they need oxygen tanks to make it through 90 minutes and this happens mainly because of what goes inside them. 

This last one I direct to the foreign base. Of course, by default the above problems mostly do not apply to them and also you can choose to argue with me on this but seriously these people are draining the Ghanaian economy. 

Whether or not Ghana wins any cup I don’t care but what I care is what they take from us upon all they take outside there and yet give nothing back. No factories or companies in their name, poverty in and around some of their family and what makes me sick to my stomach is the irrelevant foundations they set up as if we don’t know that most of the monies do not come from their own wallets. 

So now you understand why they need some EDUCATION. Ah, not forgetting their many cars, including their new JEEP CHEROKEES .THAT MAKES ME SICK TOO.