Many of Ghanaian women
footballers aspire to become national soccer stars in the future but they fear that
the down trending of women football in the country wont favor them to fulfill
their dreams. Most footballers in the various women football clubs have lost
interest in playing for their clubs because they feel that their hard work is
not appreciated.
Sena Odortei is the vice Chairman of the LA
ladies football club, he is passionate about football but his interest and passion
for the female game is dying gradually and this is due to the poor running of
the women football in the country. A situation, Sena attributed to the change of the league format leading to inadequate competition
for the various women club.
“Right now there is no
sponsorship and this has made the women football collapse, though formerly
there was no sponsorship but there was the interest during the administration
of ET Mensah and Ghatel was also sponsoring the game so the enthusiasm was
there but now everything has changed. Now they have changed style and they say
they are playing premier league. With the premier league too they play only six
matches for the whole and this is if not changed will not help the women game”.
Interacting with Ex Black Queens
player Ramonatu Tahiru, she belives that the officials have continually be
discriminatory against the women.
“ I will say it is
discriminatory against the women in Ghana, I know the Black Stars is the senior
team so is the Black Queens but the treatment giving to the male national team
is not the same give to the women team”.
The Chairperson of the women’s
league board and executive committee of GFA, Lenier Addy links the sick situation
of the women game to the poor management of some pillars in the Ghana Football
Association.
“There are so many factors in
football, we have the playing body, administration, coaching and medicines and
they are the pillars of football. But there are two areas if they are not
manage well it can affect the game and that is administration and management”.
Many good players are recruited
from the various women football club into the security services to continue
their dreams as female footballers but that most believe is one of the major
factor affecting women football in Ghana. Sena Odortei once again tells me that
there will only be an improvement if these players are distributed equally to clubs
to serve as competition to the weaker ones.
“Instead of enlisting the girls and
releasing them into their various club to play, they have rather selected the
best and they are using them for the civil servants team. We are not telling
them to enlist the girls but when you enlist them release them to their various
clubs”.
Over the years some pundit
believe that the FA have over concentrated on the Black Stars to the detriment
of the other national sides especially the women football but the technical
director of GFA Oti Akenteng thinks otherwise. He explains that several
policies have been put in place to make the women football a model in West
African sub-region. “We have the Grassroots
programs to lay a very solid foundation, that we will be able to help them to
like football and those who will not be able to play to the international level
or to become professionals can take to other areas like physiotherapy, welfare
officers etc. And these are all options that will be available. We are also
doing everything possible to equip and build a robot human resource base”.
The story will continue while
the argument follows, but the truth is that Ghana has perform poorly in their
last three outings in the African women’s championship. Even though the maidens
made history in Azerbajan in 2012 not much of investment has been made in to
women’s football.
The futures of over one thousand
five hundred women footballers are hanging on a thread until something miraculous
takes place.
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