Our players are unpatriotic — Nyaho

Firebrand former boss of Ghana football, Dr Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe, has condemned players of the Black Stars for placing money before the nation at their troubled World Cup campaign in Brazil.

Government last Tuesday yielded to pressure from the players when it okayed $100,000 as appearance fees to each of the 23 players at the World Cup, although they had earlier accepted a $75,000 proposal to each of them.

But Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe said the issue was only a small sign of the unpatriotic tendencies that have overcome contemporary Ghanaian footballers.

“Our players are not only undisciplined, they have shown no love towards the country of their birth and the state that provided them the platform to reach the levels they have attained,” he said.

“They are by far the best paid professionals in Ghana at a time when the country’s needs and resources have been stretched beyond limit. Yet they hold officials to ransom at crucial times even when the choice of representing a nation has become the pride of their contemporaries in Europe and America.

“Is it not a wonder that Ghanaian players attract better winning bonuses as compared to their counterparts in England, despite England’s superior financial power as compared to Ghana’s?” he questioned.

Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe said he was outraged by the level of indiscipline that had engulfed the Stars camp at the World Cup, and said the Ghana Football Association should be held responsible for not stamping its foot to rid the team of such tendencies.

The former Ghana Ambassador to Serbia once sacked Sulley Muntari from the camp of the Black Meteors for dissent at a time the team was preparing for the 2004 Athens Olympics.

He said the AC Milan midfielder’s disciplinary record over the years, including his near dismissal by the team’s former coach Milovan Rajevac until the intervention from GFA officials and his latest rantings during a 2014 World Cup qualifier when Kwasi Appiah substituted him, were clear manisfestations that Muntari is not only indiscipline but an incorrigible character.