Prominent soccer academy in Ghana, Right to Dream (RTD) have sent a strong warning to football agents who are manipulating their players with dubious ways such as money in other to trade them to another club to stay away, else face their legal practitioners in court.
The prominent soccer academy havea been very instrumental in the discovering and nurturing of Ghana’s future football stars and contributes immensely to Ghana National team from the youth category to the senior level.
The Academy have expressed their disgust at how some devious football agents visit the National team camps whenever their young players are called up on duty to represent the country on national assignments by persuading their lads to turn their back on the academy that have nurtured them for eight years and invested over $200, 000 dollars in the players throughout their football training, international education, feeding, clothing, shelter and medical care of all their students.
A statement from the club said “Right to Dream, like most football academies in Ghana, have noticed that in the Junior National Teams, unscrupulous agents who visit the team have used this contact time with some of the players to force them from our Academy by paying parents, corrupting and confusing the boys in order to try and sell those boys to Europe for their personal gain.
Most of the time this ruins the important first stage of the players’ careers and this leads to us losing all the years of huge financial investments and effort we commit to these players. In the last U20 World Cup this happened to a player whose career has subsequently crashed. We will not stand for it.”
After expressing their sentiments to the Ghana Football Association, RTD decided not to give their players out to the Junior National Team.
Upon several persuasions from the GFA, the Academy decided not to withhold their good deed from the nation as their aim is to build a formidable team for Ghana to win more laurels at international stages.
After coming to agreement “the GFA assured us of their full support and protection that the National Teams will not be used as the conduit to steal our players thus ensuring that like all other academies when our players come to the National Teams they are free from the influences of these unscrupulous agents and their surrogates. However, we have no MOU instructing the GFA in this regard as alleged,” RTDA said.
Academy have identified certain players who have been targeted by these dishonest agents and have withheld them from the Ghana U17 team as its their legal right under FIFA Regulations – to do so for their own personal safety, their long term prosperity, and for the security of the educational and girls' programme at the Right to Dream Academy in Ghana.
Meanwhile, the evergreen Right to Dream Academy says they are in consultation with their legal advisers on the appropriate next steps to deal with respective parties involved in this malicious and deceitful act of stealing and selling players they have not spent a penny on.
About Right to Dream
Right to Dream exists to discover and nurture role models. We provide young, talented Africans with the opportunity to fulfill their potential and the capacity to claim a better future for their communities and country.
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