Yaw Ampofo Ankrah, chairman of Ghana’s national beach soccer team, the Black Sharks, has expressed his disappointment following the team’s early exit from the AFCON beach soccer tournament in Egypt.
Black Sharks bowed out after a 10-3 victory over Tanzania, having been thrashed by Egypt and Morocco earlier in the tournament.
Speaking on GHOne TV THE GAME show, Yaw highlighted that the team’s inadequate preparations and lack of financial support somehow impacted their performance.
“The buck falls with me and I have to take full responsibility for that, I’ve said it. If it goes well, we’ll get a lot of congratulatory messages. If it doesn’t, I have to also accept that we haven’t done our best and I haven’t done my best as the chairman”.
“What more could I have done? Well, perhaps in the absence of the “no money syndrome,” we’re not ready to release funds or funds are being processed. In the absence of that, I would have had to look for corporate support or perhaps dig into my own pockets and pre-finance. But this is a national team and this comes back to this same subject that we’ve been going on for years. It’s a national team, but the priority, Our priorities for other national teams are not the same as the national team. If it’s any other national team, I’m sure we would have had all we needed ahead of time” he told GHOne TV.
Ampofo Ankrah further highlighted the team’s challenging five-hour bus journey to Haggadah, but however conducted only two training sessions before their opening match against Egypt.
“But upon arrival in Cairo, all the teams connected flights to Haggadah, where we are, as I said, by road, it’s over five hours. We had to take the bus. So we got to Cairo around just before midnight, and then we had to take the bus. We got to Haggadah early hours of the morning”.
“The boys had a bit of a rest and had to train the same day. And then the next day was a Friday, which was a full day before Saturday opening game. So we just didn’t have that rhythm, enough training, rest, recuperate, recover”.
