A Lead Convener of the #Save Ghana Demo movement, Veronica Commey believes that holding Ghana’s AFCON qualifier against Sudan outside the country will lead to inflated costs by the Ministry of Youth & Sports and the Ghana Football Association, largely due to the expenses associated with securing accommodation and paying per diems for players and officials.
As matchday 3 of the 2025 AFCON qualifiers approaches, Ghana currently lacks certified stadia following the closure of the Accra, Cape Coast, and Baba Yara Sports Stadia.
Speaking on Football Made In Ghana with host Nathan Quao on Wednesday, September 18, 2024, Veronica Commey expressed concerns about what the upcoming weeks could reveal regarding Ghana’s crucial match against Sudan.
I think that the sports minister has done enough and in terms of serving his head, we do not need to go and play in Nigeria or Cote d ‘Ivoire or anywhere before he is sacked.
He’s had too many sins surrounding him and if the government was interested in sacking him, it should be today because the international embarrassment is already on.
I do think that, as usual, we’ll try to do whatever possible just to minimize the shame so that we can play here.
We have a short time, maximum some three weeks, less than a month, I should say.
I do say in closing down the Accra Sports Stadium and all that, it’s just a question of trying to pretend that we are awakened.
I feel that playing away from home will benefit a lot of people because people will be drawing a lot of PDM, there has to be an advanced team, they need to inspect pictures, we have to get more hotels, get people in town just to acclimatize and all so it will cost us more and I do believe that there are people who benefit more so this is even a welcoming news to them.
What I’m thinking is that it won’t be the end of the world if we do not play against Sudan here.
What we can do is to look at a team or a country like Mali.
Two years ago when they had that issue, they knew it was an embarrassment but how they responded is the reason why they have the facility they have today.
Unfortunately, Ghana has been to a World Cup with so much money coming in, with people talking about how much we have spent apparently the last few years trying to refurbish the stadium without it showing and there is nothing to show for it.
I am thinking that if we are serious about changing a lot of things, it’s a good time that we embrace this embarrassment and make sure that one year on, we will have a facility to show and we would have gotten a whole lot better so that when they have precedent or anybody speak about how frustrated they feel, whenever a team will have to play outside their country, we will not be feeling or ashamed because of where we find ourselves today.
