Nyantakyi bares teeth at hooligans

The president of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Kwesi Nyantakyi, has clarified his decision not to go to the stadium in the interim and said it must not be misinterpreted to mean a boycott of matches involving  Accra Hearts of Oak.

His decision, according to him, is to allow the police who are currently investigating the incident to unravel the motive behind the action of the Hearts fans.

“I am not boycotting matches invloving Hearts of Oak but I think that as an interim measure I will not go to the stadium until the police are done with their investigations because for now I do not know if the motive was purely a football issue or a specific attack on my person,” Mr Nyantakyi told the Graphic Sports in an interview.

Narrating what took place at the Accra Sports Stadium after the Hearts-Djoliba match last Sunday, Mr Nyantakyi, who is also a CAF executive committee member, said while he left the VIP section and descended the stairs on his way out, he noticed that some of the fans had massed up at the area and suddenly one of them who was a known supporter of Hearts started spewing invectives at him.

That, he said, gave the others who had massed up the leeway to also begin to attack him verbally, while they approached him but he was shielded away by other sympathisers from the mob.

“They claim, among other allegations, that I did not like Hearts and that I refused to postpone their last league match against Ashgold. The Professional League Board (PLB), of which Hearts has a representative, determines whether or not to postpone a match and when the decision was taken I was not even in the country,” he noted.

Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Hearts of Oak,  Mr Gerald Ankrah, has said a the club, through its National Chapters Council (NCC), is instituting measures to educate its followers on the rules of the game.

“We are also considering issues about how the fans ought to conduct themselves before, during and after matches,” Mr Ankrah said.

He, however, condemned the behaviour of the fans which he described as spontaneous reaction by those supporters and hoped it never happened again.