Rachel Kakraba
CEO/Owner of Ridge City FC Women and member of the Women’s Premier League Board, Cleopatra Nsiah Nketiah, has decried the lack of interest in women’s football in Ghana. She said there are instances where some stakeholders in football get astonished to know about the women’s football league in the country. This she says has seen management of women’s football clubs with no option than to beg for sponsorship deals.
“If we talk about women’s football now, you probably get people in football going like ehh! There’s a women’s league? nobody knows, nobody even cares about it, so sometimes I guess it pays to beg, because you have to”.
Madam Nketiah who is the first female pane-list to have appeared on State Broadcaster’s football programme, ‘’Saving our Passion” which started airing on the 10th of February 2022, on all of the State Broadcaster’s radio and television platforms, opined “I can assure you that if you had started this programme by talking about women’s football, you would not have the viewers by now, nobody is interested in it”
The CEO of Ridge City said the lack of sponsorship for women’s football is amplified by the absence of data on the football front to attract sponsorship deals.
“For my club, we don’t have sponsorship because again it takes me back to what I was saying before, I cannot go to a GNPC or Stanbic and ask for money because I cannot back up what I have to say”
Madam Nketiah intimated it is a herculean task to run a football club in the country, especially with regard to women’s football.
“You ain’t developing the game, we don’t have facilities, we are always fighting with the men. We playing in women’s division one, we were actually scheduled to start our league this weekend, we can’t use the pitch because they’re having a sixth March Independence Day celebration on the pitch”
She said the problem confronting women’s football is immense and hoped in the near future some kind of attention would be given to it.
“It’s a very very serious problem, for us it’s more about finding a way to doing what we are passionate about and doing, then just trying to grow it and then hoping that one day people turn attention to Women’s football like the way it happens in Europe and America and then give us the deal”