Former Black Stars captain, Stephen Appiah, has revealed there was a point no player wanted to play for the senior national team.
“Today, I am sitting here as a proud former player of the Black Stars because I sacrificed to make others happy,” the former Olympian said on JoySports’ Prime Take with Muftawu Nabila Abdulai.
“I didn’t want to say these kinds of things, trust me, but you see, sometimes you are having conversations and things come up. Honestly, I didn’t want to even talk about it and I’ve never spoken about it before, never!
“I did it out of my heart and the end of the day today I’m sitting here as a proud former player that played in the World Cup.
“Sometimes, you have to do certain sacrifices to make people happy to give their all. You have to make people happy and that’s what I did,” he stated.
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Many claim the Black Stars has become a cash cow and avenue for players to market themselves for international exposure. The former Juventus and Fernabache man says, before it became the pride of many, no player wanted to be associated with it.
“At a point, nobody wanted to come and play for the Black Stars; maybe people have forgotten. There was no social media, so there are many things have forgotten or don’t know about.
“I paid the flight of some [of my colleagues] and I was giving people bonuses. I mean I’m not running away from it and it’s not like somebody forced me to do that but at times that.
“We had to do all these sacrifices for them to come and play because at a point no one wanted to play,” he added.
When quizzed why he paid, he explained that “… at the end who benefited? Me!. At the end, I had the chance to play in the World Cup. My dream was to play at the World Cup and when I did, my dream of playing at the World Cup was achieved so I don’t see it as a bad thing.
“You see, some sacrifices are worth it, but it has to come from your heart. We travelled with Asamoah Gyan to play a game against Congo and he charted the whole flight for us to come. It’s a sacrifice but it comes out of his will, nobody forced him to do that, nobody forced me to do that [fly home players and pay their bonuses] but I was looking at a bigger picture.
“We went to Slovenia where we were wearing our own attire in the hotel so I went to the to a shop, Mr [Kudjoe] Fianoo can testify, Alex Asante can testify. I went to the shopping mall to buy Adidas clothes for all the players and the staff in Slovenia so these are the things that are normal.
“At the time, I was playing as a pro and you see as a pro, it’s a shame that you have made a name in Italy and then you will be with your national team and they are wearing their own clothes at the national team camp which didn’t look nice.
“I was like we have to be in uniform because I had played for Udinese, I was playing for Parma and it was so nice so when we go to camp we are in uniform, everybody dressed the same, it looks nice so I decided to buy the clothes for us to look uniform and I didn’t do that because I wanted something, but if it looks bad I’ll be part of that image.
“You see, we do certain things and then it will follow you I think when you do good, good follows you when you do bad, bad follows you,” he noted.
Stephen Appiah captained Ghana to its maiden FIFA World Cup in Germany in 2006.
