Premier League side King Faisal midfielder, Michael Akuffo has suggested to football clubs in Ghana what he describes to be a “least” salary to be paid to players in the premier league as he opines on suggestions for pay cut implementation calls for players due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Akuffo, who joined Kumasi base King Faisal after returning from Ethiopia, shared his opinion on player salaries in Ghana as he weighs up the amount being paid to players in the elite division against possible pay cut implementation policy to reduced financial burden on the clubs. In his view, every premier league club should pay its players a least monthly salary of GHC1,000 each to enable the players cater for their families.
The former Asante Kotoko midfield commander shared these analogy in an interview with ghanasportspage.com, responding to calls for players to accept pay cuts to ease financial burden on clubs due to the COVID-19 inflicted struggle against economic activities.
“At least every team should be able to pay his players about GHC1,000, that is what I personally think”, Akuffo suggested. “If not anything at all, at least even if the club pays each player GHC1,000 it’s not bad”, he added.
According to him, to help improve the life of footballers in the country, a monthly salary of GHC1,000 for a start would be an ideal step to help the players build their future while playing. He stressed, that most of the players are married with children and anything less than the aforementioned figure will make life almost unbearable for them.
“If you look at the players some are married, and at the end of the day you are renting an apartment among other things, so that amount I mentioned (GHC1,000), it’s not bad for a start”, he explained.
He also appealed authorities, who by inference, are the officials of the Football Association to assist the football clubs to get more sponsors into the league to make it possible and easy for the clubs to pay such amounts. “If the authorities can do that thing, in all they have to help the teams with sponsors, and get sponsors for the league too, because if the league gains more sponsors this dream can come into reality and they (the clubs) can even pay more than the amount I am suggesting”, he added.
Touching on calls for players to accept pay cut due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Akuffo firmly objected against the motive, saying, the level of salaries being paid in Ghana to premier league players enormously low compared to that in Europe.
“That pay cut issue left with my opinion alone, if anybody asks my of my opinion I will tell you they should not bring that pay cut issue into the Ghana league, maybe it will depend on other teams but to me I don’t see it to be what will help the players”, he stressed.
Asked whether he will consider accepting should his club, King Faisal decided to implement the pay cut policy, Akuffo firmly answered in negative. “Me I will not support it even if we are still playing, because if you compare our monthly salary to other countries you can see ours is low, and everybody can testify to it in Ghana Premier League players are not really paid much, so the moment you will bring pay cut issue in, the one who receives least, what will you do about it? So these are all the factors that somebody like me, I will not support it because the salary paid to us is low”, he concluded.
Akuffo joined King Faisal on a season long deal after spending two seasons in Ethiopian premiership side Dire Dawa City S.C. His Internatioanl Transfer Certificate (ITC) arrived very late, after 14 weeks into the start of the 2019/2020 league season, and as such yet to feature for King Faisal in a competitive match.
