Former Ghana Black Stars striker , Tony Yeboah, is alleging that his refusal to bribe local referees in return for favour for his team — Yegoola FC —caused the team to be relegated to the lower division.
“As soon as we qualified to play in the first division, they started trooping into my hotel prior to our league matches, demanding that I give them money in return for favours for my team , but I refused to bow,” Tony alleged during an interview with Hello FM, a Kumasi based radio station, and monitored by the Daily Graphic .
“They made it clear that if I refused to heed their monetary demands, my team would return to the lower division, and true to their words, they pushed the team to that division in spite of our outstanding performance. With such a situation, I decided to stop investing in football to support the youth nurture their talents to brighten their future,” he said.
Explaining how the referees demanded the bribe, he said, “ They always trooped into my hotel prior to our league matches, and anytime they came ,I implored them to offer fair officiating on the field of play, and if in doing so my team lost our matches, I would appreciate their professional conduct and support them in diverse ways, but such suggestions rather infuriated them.”
Expressing concern about the situation, he said the intense bribery demands and the manner in which his team was relegated to the lower division forced him to abandon the idea of investing in football.
“Since I quit investing in football, I have regained my freedom. Without quitting, I might have eventually committed myself and bowed to their incessant bribery demands, which would have soiled the reputation I had taken years to build . I am saying this because if I had compromised to their bribery demands, it could have leaked, and the news could have spread very fast, denting the hard won reputation I had built over the years.
My intention to invest in football was to support the youth with the requisite potentials and polish them for their own benefits and that of the nation , but some of our local referees made it impossible for me to acheive a goal due to their selfish interest,” he said.
