Former President of Techiman City FC, Charles Ntim, also known as Mickey Charles has bemoaned the high level of sports betting which he has identified as one of the factors destroying Ghana football.
According to him, this has resulted in match-fixing, which has been a persistent problem for the league in recent years.
In the 2020/21 season, there were red flags raised during a high-scoring match between Ashanti Gold and Inter Allies in the Ghana Premier League.
Both teams were subsequently found guilty of match manipulation by the GFA’s Disciplinary Committee, and were consequently demoted to the Division Two League.
Speaking to MC Ogee on New York – based Adinkra Radio, Mickey Charles pointed accusing fingers at the Kurt Okraku led Ghana Football Association for the decline in quality of Ghana football.
“I blame leadership of Ghana football Association for the poor quality of Ghana football. Leadership of Ghana football Association is a problem. Today, you hear of match betting all over the place. People are able to predict the outcome of football matches and truly the same outcome is realized at the end of the match. So if you are a football fan and you already know the outcome of a football match, what business do you have going to the stadium, that is why we have few people going to watch our matches. We all watched how the premier league ended, it got to the wire in determining who won the league and which teams survived or went on relegation, it was very competitive.
“But same cannot be said of Ghana football as we already know the results of matches even before they are played and so many people don’t have the enthusiasm to go and watch our matches. This has resulted in the quality of our local league getter poorer, very low standard. Now we have our stadiums not getting parked even in matches between Hearts and Kotoko, which was never the case in the past. I’m sure you are aware of AshGold and Inter Allies match betting issue where players in their own 18 turned around and scored an own goal just because people had made a bet on that game which resulted in AshGold being banned. Match betting is killing Ghana football and the leadership of Ghana football must put their feet down and stop that practice.”
Source: Adinkraradio.com