Former Ghana International and FIFA football agent, Yusif Chibsah has described as unfortunate allegations by veteran coach J.E Sarpong that majority of players in the Ghana Premier League and the lower divisions use and abuse marijuana before and after games.
According to Chibsah, who was once a player in the Ghana League, the utterance of the experienced coach is an insult to every player, past and present who has ever played in the Ghana League.
“It is unfortunate what he said, he is a very respected and experienced coach so for him to say that is not proper. Even if he was convinced by what he was saying, I believe there are appropriate channels he could have directed those concerns to and not openly speak about it. Now every player in the league will be seen as a drug addict.” Chibsah said in an interview.
Coach J.E Sarpong made the headlines some days ago after claiming that about 60 per cent of locally-based Ghanaians footballers are addicted to marijuana and can't perform without it.
"I can say that 60% of the Ghanaian players - both in the Premier and the Division One Leagues - smoke marijuana. I have coached most of them but of course, we have something called coach-player relationship."
"There was a match between Accra Great Olympics and Hearts of Oak. One player came to me and said I should buy him ‘weed’ and we will win the match. I later noticed that he was not the only person, he was sent by his colleagues. I told him, I can’t buy it for him, so I gave him the money and in that game, he was the man of the match. He gave the assist for our winning goal." J.E Sarpong told Angel FM.
Meanwhile, Aduana Stars striker, Yahaya Mohammed reacting to this allegation in an interview on Accra based Angel FM, said coach Sarpong shouldn't make allegations of this sort and go scot-free.
"Our culture frowns upon the smoking of marijuana and the police on countless occasions have raided various places believed to be the hideouts of people who smoke. Some are even imprisoned for doing that yet you encouraged someone to smoke and play football for your selfish gains."
"And here we are in Ghana, he is still walking as a free man. He bought weed(Marijuana) for a player to play football for him. He said it but nothing has been done to him."
"He has questions to answer, they have to call him because I know you can't make such a comment in Europe and go scot-free. They will question you to answer." Yahaya Mohammed told Accra based Angel FM.