{"id":380242,"date":"2017-12-05T12:07:16","date_gmt":"2017-12-05T12:07:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=380242"},"modified":"2017-12-05T12:10:23","modified_gmt":"2017-12-05T12:10:23","slug":"corruption-destroyed-ghana-football-osafo-maafo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/12\/corruption-destroyed-ghana-football-osafo-maafo\/","title":{"rendered":"Corruption has destroyed Ghana football &#8211; Osafo Maafo"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"\" data-block=\"true\" data-editor=\"4eats\" data-offset-key=\"3eb9e-0-0\">\n<div class=\"_1mf _1mj\" data-offset-key=\"3eb9e-0-0\"><span data-offset-key=\"3eb9e-0-0\">Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Maafo has pointed out the increasing rate of corruption in Ghana football as the main reason for the falling standards of the local league.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"\" data-block=\"true\" data-editor=\"4eats\" data-offset-key=\"6s7f6-0-0\">\n<div class=\"_1mf _1mj\" data-offset-key=\"6s7f6-0-0\"><span data-offset-key=\"6s7f6-0-0\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"\" data-block=\"true\" data-editor=\"4eats\" data-offset-key=\"4asn9-0-0\">\n<div class=\"_1mf _1mj\" data-offset-key=\"4asn9-0-0\"><span data-offset-key=\"4asn9-0-0\">The Ghana Premier League has regressed in recent years and has been without a headline sponsor for two years running.<\/span><\/div>\n<div data-offset-key=\"4asn9-0-0\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"_1mf _1mj\" data-offset-key=\"4asn9-0-0\">Speaking at the launch of the Ghana Anti-Corruption Week, the Former Sports Minister who was at the helm when Ghana first qualified for the World Cup in 2006, called on football authorities to be transparent in their running of affairs in order to win back the trust and interest of the public.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cI have been Minister for Sports before, and it was during my time that Ghana qualified for the World Cup for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of the first things I did was to invite the match officials to my office,\u00a0because the league becomes important when people see fairness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou destroy the league of the country when people know that matches are being fixed. Corruption got so deep in football after 2010 that Ghanaians stopped being interested in the local league,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He also stressed the importance of cleaning up the league system in order to have a positive reflection on the Black Stars.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCorruption in the officiating of Ghana Premier League matches has had a very negative effect on our football, to the extent that local players hardly feature in the Black Stars\u00a0call-ups\u00a0these days.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat is certainly not the best, as we used to get about half of the Black Stars from the local league, with most of them coming from Hearts, Kotoko, Olympics, Eleven Wise and a few others. And these players were very competitive and conquered Africa.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese teams also conquered Africa in their own right, but how are our teams doing in Africa these days? The winner of our league cannot even make it through the first round of the CAF competition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe must make sure that those who are guilty of these corrupt offences are found out and punished accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>By: Daniel Koranteng\/citimfmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Maafo has pointed out the increasing rate of corruption in Ghana football as the main reason for the falling standards of the local league. \u00a0 The Ghana Premier League has regressed in recent years and has been without a headline sponsor for two years running. Speaking at the launch of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[142],"tags":[461,409],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Corruption has destroyed Ghana football - Osafo Maafo - Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/12\/corruption-destroyed-ghana-football-osafo-maafo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Corruption has destroyed Ghana football - Osafo Maafo - Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. 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