Ghanaian President John Dramani
Mahama has told Bloomberg News,
flying $3 million to the nation’s
soccer team was “necessary” even as
a defender filmed kissing the cash
helped send the team out of the
World Cup with an own goal.
Mahama, whose government relied on
the central bank to pay its bills last
quarter, sent a jet with more than $3
million to Brasilia to prevent a
possible boycott of yesterday’s game
against Portugal.
Defender John Boye can be seen
kissing a stack of money in a hotel
after it arrived by armed escort,
according to Rio de Janeiro-based
Globo TV.
Boye scored an own-goal in the
game yesterday as Ghana, whose
team is known as the Black Stars at
home, lost 2-1.
“I believe valuable lessons were
learned by all,” Mahama said in an e-
mailed response to questions from
Bloomberg News. “There was a
problem with the initial mode of
transportation for the payment and so
we made other arrangements that,
while unconventional, were
necessary.”
The Black Stars’ behavior off the field
overshadowed its three games in
Brazil.
The Ghana Football Association
denied it had agreed to fix future
international exhibition games,
suspended two of its top players for
fighting and downplayed the threat of
a boycott of the Portugal game.
The London-based Daily Telegraph
reported this week that two men
offered the association’s president a
bribe to help fix matches.
The football association suspended
Sulley Muntari of AC Milan and
Kevin-Prince Boateng, who plays for
FC Schalke 04 in Germany, for fighting
with Coach James Kwesi Appiah and
other squad officials.
Giving All
“I don’t think you can place that
many human beings together in a
team, all of them stars in their own
right, and not have some measure of
ego display and some amount of
discord,” Mahama said. “Our
elimination at this stage is not for
lack of talent or effort. The Black
Stars have given their all.”
Ghana tied three-time World Cup
champion Germany 2-2 and lost to
the U.S. 2-1 in its other two group
games. In the last World Cup in South
Africa four years ago, it reached the
quarterfinals before losing to Uruguay
on penalty kicks.
The sight of a cavalcade with police
support ferrying the cash to the hotel
where Ghana’s team was staying
wasn’t a good image, said Jerome
Valcke, secretary general of soccer’s
governing body FIFA.
It would have been better to do it “in
a normal way, which means a bank
transfer,” Valcke told reporters in Rio
de Janeiro.
The payday for Ghana’s soccer
players comes as the country’s
economy is struggling.
Growth will ease to the slowest pace
since 2009 this year because of power
shortages, a slumping currency and
falling commodity prices, the
International Monetary Fund said last
month.
The central bank financing of the
budget deficit led Fitch Ratings to
warn of even higher inflation in a
country that already has one of the
highest rates in the world.
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