The Ghana Football Association (GFA) will reimburse all the $4m the country’s government spent on the Black Stars at the 2014 World Cup ending, thoughts that the country’s tax payers money was spent on the national team during the tournament in Brazil.
The GFA has announced that its promise of repaying all the $4m the country’s government loaned to the Black Stars team for their participation in the tournament will be refunded today.
This follows FIFA’s payment of the prize-money meant for the Black Stars for their participation in the competition held in June.
The GFA is expected to have received between $7m to $8m after all deductions by FIFA for the team’s participation at the tournament in Brazil.
Government agreed to loan the team an amount of about $4m to pay appearance fees at the tournament which will be refunded after the competition when the FIFA prize-money is paid.
GFA, keen on making it clear that no public funds was spent on the national team during the competition in Brazil, says it will repay all the loan made to the team today.
“Prior to the tournament in Brazil, the GFA reached an accord with government to pre-finance the Black Stars team’s participation in the tournament with the agreement that it will be reimbursed when participation fees are paid by FIFA,” the GFA said in a statement released on Thursday morning.
“FIFA has now paid the GFA for the Black Stars participation in the tournament.
“As such the GFA will meet the Minister for Youth and Sports Honourable Mahama Ayariga today to refund government’s money.” In June, the Ghana team refused to train just days before their final group match against Portugal because government promise of paying the appearance fees on time was not kept.
Ghana’s government had to send more than $4m in cash by plane to Brazil to pay the players which attracted some negative publicity for the country.
Fifa has revealed it was ready to pay Ghana’s players their World Cup bonuses directly and deduct it from the Ghana Football Association’s prize money.
Fifa secretary general Jerome Valcke described the situation as sad.
“The players have the right to receive their money but it would be much easier to do this by bank transfer,” he said.
“The fact that the money came in cash is also sad because I was ready to sign a letter, as long as I had a copy of the agreement between the national association and the players, that the money would be paid by Fifa by bank transfer into their personal accounts.
“Fifa would have made sure to deduct the players’ money from the prize money paid to the national association.”
Ghana will have contracts with players at future international tournaments to avoid the problems encountered at the 2014 World Cup over bonus payments.
The players took strike action because they had not been paid prior to Brazil 2014, resulting in $4m in cash flown out to appease the squad.
The country’s football association said it would revert to “signed agreements” and bank transfers for bonuses.
Ghana failed to qualify from the group stage in Brazil.
As well as the defeat by Portugal, Ghana lost 2-1 to the United States and drew 2-2 with Germany.