Sports Minister Nii Lante Vanderpuye has announced that the practice of paying winning bonuses to Black Stars players during qualification campaigns would be ceased, to mirror the current situation facing every other national team.
The Minister, who joined the Ministry in the last Ministerial reshuffle, made the announcement to the Ghana Weightlifting team, who paid a visit on him at his office Tuesday, ahead of their participation in this year’s Rio Olympics.
Mr Vanderpuye told the delegation that because other national teams are not paid any bonuses during their qualification series, the Ministry has to be consistent by revoking the Stars receiving winning bonuses during qualification.
“I just want to say on record that the principle is; we do not pay bonuses on qualifications. When you have qualified for the competitions, then we take care of it, but when you are attempting to qualify, we do not, and the truth of the matter is that a bad precedence has been set in the past with football and that we hope to change.
“We shall change it because if footballers play qualification for Cup of Nations and they are paid winning bonus then the athletes when they also run to qualify for Olympics must be paid bonuses…so, if we are not doing that for the rest of the teams, then we should also take a look at what we are doing for football.” he added.
“All the sporting disciplines and all the athletes and the sportsmen and women and footballers are all Ghanaians”.
The issue of paying bonuses to the Black Stars is a touchy one, underlined by the debacle that was Ghana’s campaign in Brazil. After that their bonuses were capped at a fixed appearance fee, but it seems they might be losing that as well soon.
That’s sure to cause some friction amongst this prima donna filled team- if its ever implemented.