Head of Communications for CAF, Luxolo September has advised the Ghana Football Association (GFA) on how to make the Ghana Premier League a prime content and a premium brand for it to be regarded as one of Africa’s best leagues.
The CAF Communications Director made the remarks based on the current state of the South African league (PSL).
Luxolo suggests strengthening the league’s commercial aspect and building the capacity to pay players the right salaries for them to stay in the league will help them to have exceptional value in the market.
He however said the players in the South African league can receive at least $1000 and $2000 as their salaries every month and other African countries should follow.
Speaking on how to make the Ghanaian league and other African leagues attractive, he said they should be masters of their destiny(destinies) and stop depending on others.
“I’m from South Africa and they strengthened their commercial aspect of the game. Players in South Africa can earn $3500 a month and the lowest-paid players receive $1000 in the Premier League at the moment. Now the reality is simple. You have to strengthen the commercial side of the football. You know as Africans we like southern slogans, colonialism, do whatever, and then tomorrow we go and beg someone to pay for my flight, pay for my coaching courses, and so on. We have to be masters of our destiny not others. The actual controlling of the game is investing money in football, ensuring that we create our systems, we have self-efficient, we have self-sustaining. That is the most important thing.
“Ghana football has produced many stars (Sammy Kuffour, my big brother, Anthony Baffoe) and many other people from Ghana.
“The people must ask themselves how do we take our football league to the next level and stop this obsession with European teams. Put money from Ghana in Ghana. That is the most important thing,” he told the Ghanaian portal, Ghanasportspage.com
In addition, he stated, “We are not against globalization. We watch other leagues. In the country (South Africa) the league is the most popular more than the EPL. South Africans believe they want to control their destiny and the various systems. That is the only way to make things happen.
“Am not qualified to lecture Ghanaians on what is good for them. What I can tell you is we have to put systems in place and keep our best players because Ayew plays in Qatar and he must come and play for Hearts of Oak. It’s important and you must build some teams like Hearts of Oak as commercial brands and ensure that this brand is viable to build the league.
“The Ghana Premier League must be a premium brand that is attractive to television. It must be a prime content producer. Football is content. You know if the Ghana league is not a strong content producer, it will be difficult to sell it. Is important that Africans must focus. But to do all these things you’ve got to build your own thing. You cannot be a consumer for the rest of your life at some stage we have to find ways to create our path. Same thing the South Africans have done with their league. We want to control everything. We don’t ask for aid from anyone. We don’t depend on anyone. We are not going to ask for anyone to sponsor. When we talk to someone we talk for big contracts because we can create this value change,’ he ended.
