Former Hearts of Oak chairman, Harry Zakour has blamed recent poor attendance at match venues on the leadership of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), indicating that lack of seriousness on their part is a major contributing factor to the issue.
League centres in recent times have recorded low turnouts for games including matches involving giants Hearts of Oak and Asante Kotoko.
Despite the deployment of systems like e-ticketing to make access to stadia easier, it appears that, the ultimate interest in the Ghana Premier League continues to diminish as each week goes by.
The former Hearts CEO believes that the current administration of Ghana football have not been pragmatic enough to rescue the situation. According to him, the FA have done little to make the league attractive to potential audiences.
“They all have to wake up and get serious about getting a solution to this issues but as I said the GFA is not serious. In our time, we did a lot of adverts, and publicity through interviews, again the league was very strong and people would love to watch it over European leagues but today the case has been overturned.
“How many players in the league are superstars? Because GFA is not serious and the ministry too is not serious, everything is collapsing.
“Nobody knows there is a league game, even myself I sometimes don’t know when my darling club Accra Hearts of Oak are playing,” he complained on Akoma FM.
He also suggested that the FA explores the opportunity of hosting foreign teams in attractive tournaments and also make the welfare of players their priority.
“The FA must start inviting teams to play in competitions across the country and make sure the players are well-paid and maintained over the years. For me this is the only solution,” he added.
During his time as Hearts CEO, Harry Zakour oversaw the team win almost everything there is to win as a club including six league titles in succession and conquering Africa as well.
Source: Akoma FM