By Nathaniel Nartey
Former Minister of Youth and Sports Edwin Nii Lante Vanderpuye has revealed the cost of a Black Stars match which apparently is a staggering $1m and even more. This according to him was the budget for a single game the Black Stars played before he took over as Minister. Mr. Vanderpuye was highly unpopular during his time as Minister for Youth and Sports as he sought to “correct some of these things”, but was vilified instead. According to him, even members of the famous “Black Stars Management Team” ganged up against him.
“I could not just fathom how a state like Ghana would spend more than $1m on one Black Star match”
“If you are paying a winning bonus of $10k and you have about 28 players in camp, that’s $280k. And when the players are coming in, they fly business class. They go for the $1000 business class tickets because someone needs to get their cut. In this country as soon as you try to make decisions to correct these things you become the public enemy because those benefiting from the system will create that demonic structure for you”.
”You know how I was vilified to the extent that Black Stars Management members will tell players that Nii Lante doesn’t like you, so he said we should not call local players to play”
This happened at a time the Black Stars had already qualified for the World Cup. Mr Vanderpuye argued that “why not use part of the money to finance the Paralympics and the other national teams”.
The former Head of Sports at GBC was not happy at the situation where players who have benefited from playing for the Black Stars are not doing enough to give back and help improve football in the country.
“Sadio Mane uses almost 40% of his earnings from Liverpool into charity and development projects in Senegal. Our players, the so-called millionaires, what impact have they made in society”.
Mr Vanderpuye was part of an elite team of Panelists who featured on the 2nd edition of the special programme “Saving Our Passion” on GTV Sports+ (February 17, 2022).
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