Youth and Sports Minister Nii Lantey Vanderpuye has denied claims that his failure to motivate the Black Satellites accounted for their failure to qualify for next year’s Africa Youth Championship.
Ghana, for once in many years missed the African championship on 2-3 aggregate to their Senegalese counterparts.
The former Africa and World champions’ failure to make it to the final in Zambia in 2017 has stirred some officials of the team to blame the minister for the mishap.
But defending his stand, the Minister said, ” The Ministry has purposed that payments that are legitimate and covered with receipts would be taken care of, so when auditors come around we won’t be found wanting, but we can’t pay monies that can’t be accounted for.”
” Let me tell you the truth the team is good, we had a bad day. Our opponents were burly so they pushed our guys any time they had the ball, we should have varied our game. We did all we could by way of financial motivation.”
“If there is another motivation besides per diem and winning bonus as the chairman was referring to, then we won’t do it because it is our policy not to do so,” he said on Happy FM
He added, “We had chances we didn’t score, the Senegalese were technically composed than us. This temporal set back should not affect us because we have a good team.”
“The management Chairman approached me so I directed him to the accountant who told him we didn’t have enough money. It’s our policy not to do it.”
By Kofi Owusu Aduonum