It has emerged that the Ghana FA did not provide any information to world football governing body, FIFA, over whether or not there were professional football clubs in the country when FIFA was compiling data for its 2019 FIFA Professional Football Report.
The report was released on Wednesday and it was to provide updates on what the trends were across the world in FIFA’s member countries.
The report looked at the number of professional clubs and players there were in those countries, the formats of their league championships, details of their transfers both incoming and outgoing and the existence of club licensing regulations.
On page 62 of the report, the data on Ghana seemed to showed that there were no professional clubs or players in the country.
However, a closer examination of the report reveals that the Ghana FA did not provide any information to FIFA on professional clubs and players.
The lack of an answer was shows by the use of a dash (-). FIFA explained in the Executive Summary (page 7) of the report that in the event that any Member Association failed to give a response to a question, a dash would be placed there to state that fact.
While some expressed doubt over the what was interpreted as the absence of a professional football club in Ghana, others have wondered why the GFA did not provide any answers to FIFA during the data collection phase of the report.
What information did Ghana provide?
The Ghana FA provided answers to questions over the existence of standard contracts, player associations, league sponsorship, competitions and club licensing regulations.
How did FIFA get the information from member associations?
FIFA said that it collected the data from member associations between April and October of 2019 and it did so using an online questionnaire.
