The projected renewal of Coach Kwasi Appiah’s contract for two more years, as head coach of the Black Stars, is heading for trouble with the Ministry of Youth and Sports expressing strong disagreement over the new deal, leaving the Ghana Football Association (GFA) in a dilemma.
The FA’s Emergency Committee, at a post-World Cup meeting with the Executive Committee, underlined its intentions to renew Coach Appiah’s deal and followed it up with what it described as a proposal in which the Stars coach’s emoluments were raised from $20,000 to a whopping $36,500 a month, in addition to $150,000 signing-on fee.
But unimpeachable sources at the football controlling body have indicated that long before the FA big guns presented the contract details to the Executive Committee, they had already consummated the contract with Appiah. That was way back before the Stars campaign at the 2014 World Cup.
The deal was said to have been at the behest of the coach, when the contract was nearing its expiry before the 2014 World Cup began.
In the midst of all this, the GFA still maintained that the contract was yet to be signed by both parties and Appiah, who just returned from a post-World Cup holiday, has been waiting to sign the deal since last week.
According to the sources, the Ministry of Youth and Sports, which is responsible for the payment of the coach’s emoluments, is against the swift move to renew Appiah’s contract on account of the troubles that rocked the Stars camp in Brazil.
And in his meeting with members of the FA’s Executive Committee last week, the Minister of Youth and Sports, Mahama Ayariga, was said to have made clear his position on the re-engagement of Appiah, allegedly stating that his interaction with some players of the national team had revealed that many of them had lost confidence in the coach.
The GFA, confronted with a delicate issue and yet looking to work its way out of the quagmire, was said to be exploring a compromise deal for Appiah, who has the right to demand a huge financial compensation from his employers if the two-year contract extension is abrogated.
The sources also revealed that the FA was in talks with Appiah over the need to recruit a foreign technical advisor for him.
Such a recruitment would be at the FA’s expense and the rationale is to strengthen the Stars’ technical bench ahead of the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers which commence next month.
Ghana, who are in group five of the qualifiers with Uganda, Guinea and Togo, begin their campaign with a home clash against Uganda on the first weekend of September..
