A Ghanaian football legend, John Smith Bannerman has taken a swipe at modern day footballers tagging them as unserious.

Bannerman, a proper Asante Kotoko legend made the assertion while doing a comparison between the actions of players in his time and those of nowadays.

He argued that during his time, all they cared about as footballers was training hard and getting much rest to enhance performance on the pitch.

He followed by indicating that its much different in present times because player allow many distractions to take their focus from the game.

He lamented instances where players spend much time on their phones, and barely get much needed rest as athletes.

John Bannerman made this known in an interview with Kumasi-based radio station Silver FM.

“The problem is that these days the boys (players) are not serious. That’s what I know. These days even if players are in camp, they will spend long hours on phone talking and chatting. They won’t have enough rest before games,” he said.

“During our time, there were no phones to serve as distraction, so after training we had much rest and prepared well for games.

“So we were always strong. We kept our diet and weight in check. A footballer is not supposed to be a glutton. We were always mindful of not falling beyond our weight limit. Player fitness issues were paramount then,” he added.