If you think we are exaggerating or playing mischief, it is far from that. This happened in Ghana and we thought that it would be a good idea to remind you, that somewhere in the world, are people a lot less privileged than ourselves.
A football player in Ghana, received a pair of slippers after being voted the best player in a match. Not that Ghana’s football authorities deliberately gave him the slippers to mock him, but that is all they could afford to show their appreciation for his efforts.
Emmanuel Sowah Adjei- a player of Dream FC received the pair of slippers as his award after his team defeated D’ International 1-0, in the Ghanaian second-tier division, at Ghana’s port city of Tema.
Ever since the award was given, Ghana football authorities have come under severe criticisms after the events went viral on social media.
When the photo was first posted on Facebook, lots of people thought the image was Photoshopped in order to ridicule the organizers of the competition; but an official of Dream FC later confirmed to the local media that the award was indeed presented to the player and that the picture is real. The club had apparently been presenting such items to its players after every match played in the league.
The club said, the award given to the player is of their own initiative and the idea is to encourage the players to perform well in their matches; that way their chances of getting promoted to the elite division of the Ghana Premier League, significantly increases.
“It’s very pitiable with the way people are lambasting the Division One League (DOL) board for providing the awards to the players, it’s our own initiative to award our players and not the DOL board,” the club said in a statement.
The statement further added, that there are lots of players who had been awarded similar items as best player in previous matches, and that it was due to financial difficulties that compelled the club to rely on such items as rewards to motivate its players.
The club currently has 19 points, after winning six matches in nine games. Management of the team, have said the introduction of the best player award, which is rewarded with slippers only, has improved the team and they are hoping to make a real impact in the league.
Ghana is blessed with many talented football players, but the infrastructure and finances needed to develop the game to its fullest have hampered the full utilization of these talents. Unfortunately, this makes the country still considerably underdeveloped in the game that is considered one of the worlds most popular sports.
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Ok the premise of the article is to create awareness that African footballers operate with much lower budgets than their European counterparts. However the value judgement about their award being ‘sad’ is very biased toward a materialistic view. This story is not sad at all, if you don’t assume that huge financial rewards are the key to happiness. I suspect that the awarded player was honored to receive the shoes, as much for the symbol they represent as their practical functionality.
^This