Chairman for the Shama District Football Association and football administrator, George Kuntu Blankson has made a passionate and humble appeal to the President of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Kurt E. S. Okraku and the Executive Council of the GFA to take juvenile football into consideration where distributing the balls to be supplied by Macron.
The GFA on Wednesday signed a three-year partnership/sponsorship deal with Italian kits and balls manufacturing company Macron, which makes them the official match ball sponsors/partners of the GFA, covering such competitions of the FA which include the Ghana Premier League (GPL), the MTN FA Cup competition and the National Division One League.
The GH¢1.6m three-year deal will see Macron supply the GFA a total of Five Thousand (5,000) pieces of footballs and One Thousand and Five Hundred (1,500) pieces of bibs every season, which will be shared among clubs. At the unveiling of the contract, there was an absolute silence on juvenile football and this has come as a major worry for the Shama District FA Chairman, Kuntu Blankson, who have made an appeal to the GFA President to allocate more of the balls to juvenile football to curb the problem of ball unavailability within the various District football Associations.
The legendary sports journalist of West Gold Radio fame, has pleaded the FA to allocate half of the footballs to be supplied by Macron to juvenile football. The 2018 Western Showbiz Best Sports Presenter of the Year explained, that colts football which is the genesis of footballers’ development in the country, lack balls. Most of them either do not have balls at all, others with woefully inadequate balls whiles others find themselves using substandard balls.
He called on the GFA, the Executive Council, the Premier League Clubs, Division One clubs and well as the Women’s League Committee to sacrifice half of the number of balls to be given them to juvenile football to help the development of talents at that level.
“I will plead with the Ghana Football Association President, Mr Kurt Okraku and his Council Members to allocate half of the balls to juvenile football, yes, half of it”, Kuntu told West Gold Radio in Sekondi Takoradi. This is because sometimes much attention is not given to juvenile football. If you at our kids especially U13, U15, U15, U17 and even our third division I believe there’s much work to be done there. But especially the juvenile, the colts is very important, sometimes the balls some of them use is quiet worrying. So I will plead with our Executive Council, our President to talk to the premier league clubs, the Division One clubs and the Women’s League Committee so that the balls that will come, if say they will given 30 each, they should take at least 15 of that 30 to be given to each division so that at least half of that should go the the juvenile football Associations”, he pleaded.
In his submission, the Unicorn FC President stressed on the problems facing the various juvenile football associations regarding footballs, and believes if his plea is granted, it will bring great relief to them.
“If they get more balls that will help the kids to get more balls for use during training and matches. Sometimes you go to places and they have only one ball and it’s a worry. I know Mr Kurt Okraku is a listening leader and I beg Him in the name of God to allocate half of the balls to come to juvenile football Associations”, he concluded.
With 18 premier league clubs, 48 Division One League clubs in addition to Women’s League clubs all to feed on same balls to come, it is left with time to see whether the FA will give priority to the request of the Shama District Football Association Chairman.
