It’s just nine games into the Ghana Premier League but the excitement brought along is sweeping through football fans like bush fire in the harmattan with an unstoppable display of irresistible skills and goals.
Ghana football fans have applauded the Football Association for the excellent packaging of the leauges and the stupendous media following with the #BringBackTheLove sloganeering leading the way.
To many fans, the Ghana FA has scored more than average with just the mine matches played and are hopeful that the Kurt Okraku administration will even lift the bar a notch higher with the remaining 25 matches to end the season.
Based on the nine games played with its attendant successes and challenges, religious followers of the Ghanaian game believe the Ghana FA has started well with the packaging of the league but have urged authorities to still improve.
In a survey on social media, precisely Facebook and Twitter, to elicit views of Ghanaians on the ongoing Ghana Premier League, several fans applauded the FA for many reasons including, but not limited to the following:
✓ The aura around the league
✓ The massive media coverage
✓ The level of play and quality of goals scored so far
✓ Clubs winning away from home
✓ The television coverage by broadcast sponsors StarTimes
✓ Massive spectatorship in almost all games
✓ How clubs are maximizing the use of social media
✓ The competitiveness of the league;
… these among others were the highs pointed by over hundred respondents to the question: What do you think about the league so far and what would you want to change?
Despite applauding and praising the FA for the wonderful start to the league, the brilliant media coverage, the buzzing fans and the swashbuckling goals being scored, the fans called on the association to pay serious attention to three major areas
• Officiating
• Playing fields
• Nigative reportage from some media quarters.
About 90% of the fans who responded to the question on Facebook and Twitter commended match officials for their wonderful performance so far in the league ascribing the great display of clubs away from home to the brilliant performance of referees but called for improvement.
Some of the fans are of the view that, some of the decisions of the center men go beyond human errors, calling on the FA to ensure such decisions do no go unpusnished.
Of course, some officials have been punished for poor decisions in the league. So far in th league, about 5 center referees have been punished for poor decisions and it looks likely that more could be recorded.
Generally, the state of pitches in the country have been poor, especially so, considering the season. Almost all pitches in the country are brown instead of the usual green nature but for the Sogakope Park which is an AstroTurf.
90% of the respondents believe that the FA must ensure the state of the pitches by the clubs improve drastically since they affect the quality of play negatively.
The media have certainly been commended for the wonderful job they’ve done so far in the league but many of the fans believe some of the comments from a section of them do not facilitate and accelerate an enabling environment for the corporate world to partner.
Below are some of the responses from Facebook:
Some responses on Twitter as well:
