Former Minister of Youth and Sports, Elvis Afriyie Ankrah, says Black Stars players must be blamed for the 2014 World Cup scandal.
The senior national exited the group stage at the Mundial in 2014 with just a point after three games.
Before the final group game, each player was $100,000 after the playing body threatened to boycott the game forcing government to charter a direct flight to Brazil to fix the issue.
However, in an interview with ChannelOne TV, the former Sports Minister, believes that he was unfairly targeted since the major issues that needed addressing weren’t.
“The biggest tragedy that happened to us was the way we handled the aftermath of the 2014 World Cup. After that World Cup, instead of the country focusing on the root causes of the issues, the focus was on me so it was all about me, me, me.”
“The root cause of the problem was that players insisted that they wanted ($) 100,000 appearance fee; the government said that we can only give you ($) 82,500 then the players said, if you don’t give us the money, we will not train so government had to buckle in. Then the players now said we don’t want a transfer, we want physical cash and so we were caught in a situation where we had to give them the cash and they refused to train twice and then they didn’t win to qualify for the next stage.
“So that was the root cause. When the commission was set up, instead of the commission focusing on that, the commission was focused on me.
He added, "If there are issues and I take responsibility, am I a player, do I play football? Is it my duty to go and train and play ball? So where players have relegated their duty, they must also be called to account so that then became a problem.”
The Black Stars' early elimination led to Kwesi Appiah's sacking as head coach of the team.