“A call up to my national team fills me with pride and honour. It is amazing how far I have come in my career courtesy the opportunity granted me to win my first cap.” These are comments attributed to various footballers I have known all my life on getting the opportunity to play for the national sides.

Interestingly, these players are from various parts of the world. At look at the way the sport is managed in these countries would give one a fair understanding into the economics of sports in general. In the advanced settings, there are structures that ultimately lead to a sportsman earning all the goodies that come with playing a particular sport.

The American economy can afford to pay all the “outrageous” wages it doles out to Basketball, Baseball and the lads in American Football. The wages are ridiculously high that the likes of Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant and co would demand next to nothing to feature for their national basketball teams. The case is not too different for footballers originating from countries like Germany, Spain, Holland, England and co as they also make far in excess from their clubs than from playing for their nations.  You may be wondering why I am taking this path in the first place.

I chanced upon a discussion this morning on Asempa Fm this morning as to what would best pass for rewarding the current Black Stars Squad. Before I touch base on the current generation though, it is always fair to have a historical look at what transpired in the past, maybe, not too long ago. Gone are the days when players had to use their resources to cater for air tickets and had to literally fight officialdom to get these monies refunded. How ironic it was that they almost always seemed happy to jump at the opportunity to get a call up at the time. What was in it for them, one always asked? Well, we do know why now.

Players who had the opportunity to showcase their talent at the biggest showpiece events almost always ended up being snapped by the highest bidder. El-Hadji Diouf is a classical example of a player who featured for then Racing Lens in the French Ligue 1. A club that would at best pass for also runs. A spectacular showing in Japan/Korea in 2002 landed him a £10m move to Liverpool and with the perks that followed. Monaco may have paid €45m to secure the rights to James Rodriguez lasts season. Fast forward that to just over twelve months and how a spectacular World Cup doubled his price tag. Real Madrid paying almost a double that amount (€88m) to secure his services. There was absolutely no way Colombia and Senegal would have been able to pay these huge amounts to the two players mentioned. What they did was to give them a platform to demonstrate their ability to the world. The big question is why does it seem to be the other way round in the last couple of years for certain players with the Black Stars a good case study?

Then Sports Minister Osafo Marfo and the Kufuor government, desperate to see Ghana play at the World Cup literally quadrupled the wages from a mere $2,000.00 to $8,000.00 all in the name of boosting the morale of the lads during the qualifying campaign for Germany 2006. It worked like magic and has continuously done so for the side as the Black Stars have qualified for a further two world cups in 2010 and 2014. But there is a caveat.

The World Cup is played once in four years and the funds generated from that are wisely used by FIFA as their other competitions do not generate that much money. In the same vein, you would expect that monies accrued from the World Cup would not be lavishly spent especially for an emerging economy like Ghana who depend so much on Government to fund its activities. I find it quite strange that more than half of the $7.1m net garnered from the World Cup went into bonuses and emoluments alone. Juxtapose that with the Germans who can afford all that and more spending under a 5^th of their World Cup Funds on bonuses agreed with the team for winning the tournament.

And this is my worry. The world cup is played once in four years. If we are using more than half of funds generated on bonuses, not to talk of the expenditure in securing qualification, why on earth would common sense not go into the judicious use of this money? We are paying a $100,000 for players, technical team members and officials to “appear” at a competition including those who barely kicked a ball in the qualification process (players). Is this sustainable? Granted we are making soo much money from the World Cup to pay these ridiculously high wages, what then would pass for judicious use of funds for the Nations Cup? This is a competition where the winner earns not more than $2m yet our budget for qualification and participation alone for a single AFCON exceeds $10m.You may argue all you want about short, medium and long-term benefits from the investment made into football but is it not strange that the expected returns on these investments have barely made sense for the continuous lavish spending?

Federations that generate so much spend huge amounts of money on development purposes and the returns clearly manifest themselves over a period. The local league was probably one of the finest on the continent before Ghana qualified for the World Cup would only pass for a big joke these days? Our World Cup performances are still not reflecting on the local game. It’s been almost a decade since a Ghanaian club played in the final of the Continental club competitions. The last being Kotoko and Hearts in the Confed Cup in 2004. Our clubs have barely made the group stages within this period. Sponsorship, Stadium attendance, quality of football being played and pitch standards are really nothing to write home about. Community football that churned out talent is literally dead and we blow half these funds on bonuses and morally justify this? Absolutely incredible as my senior Kwabena Yeboah would say.

I listened to the various arguments on the show. I was quite baffled with the “insurance” stance being made concerning injuries.  There are risk we take in life which would ultimately end up in our good or otherwise. Whatever we earn from our working lives may not necessarily be enough (not the current generation of sportsmen). In the same vein, we all make do with whatever we earn to sustain us. The lads amongst other things opted to play football at a risk and I respect that but how the nation should bear the brunt of such excessive wages over the long term is worrying especially when the World Cup booty does not come through every twelve months.

In my honest opinion, players do deserve decent wages but at what point do we tell them that their demands are unrealistic especially for an AFCON where the winner earns a paltry $2m? And can they be respectfully reminded that the glory they share is mostly individualistic. How many Senegalese people benefitted from Diouf’s transfer to Liverpool and the life transforming state of the player after that move? Whatever happened to pride, dedication and passion?

A smart player is one who grabs the national opportunity and turns it into gold with his performance. One whose orientation is poor (management not exempted) is the one waiting for that opportunity to hold the state to ransom. Come to think of it, some of our players could have been playing for some of the biggest clubs in the world if they had replicated the performance against Germany in the games they played. Who knows?

How about those who are suggesting that bonuses should be tired to output and returns? As a country, we negotiated to pay wages based on returns from the World Cup. In that vein as well, if we are earning $2m from winning the AFCON, why should the nation end up paying wages exceeding the Prize money or how much we earn based on the windfall from the CAN? Makes sense? Waiting to see the components of the AFCON budget. Should be soon I gather.