President of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Kurt E.S. Okraku has issued an update that deliberations on Standard Player Contracts (SPCs) for professional footballers in the country are going very well.
Over the past few weeks, the FA has been engaging the Professional Footballers Association of Ghana (PFAG) on strategies and protocols to improve the living conditions of professional footballers in the three top-tier leagues – the Ghana Premier League (GPL), the Division One League (DOL) and the Women’s Premier League (WPL).
The Executive Council of the GFA took the decision for the introduction of a Standard Player Contract back in June.
“The PFAG lives and seeks the welfare of footballers and as a Football Association, it’s so important for us to be interested in the welfare of players.
“It’s not every player that would become Prince Tagoe, Odartey Lamptey or John Mensah. A greater percentage of players who have represented our country at various levels do not enjoy the kind of life they will usually want.
“A lot more of them are challenged, a case in point is the late Abu Imoro, a player who represented our true colors. What happened to Abu Imoro can happen to anybody so when we have an Association that seeks the welfare of players, it is imperative that the GFA should be interested in the activities of that welfare body that seeks the welfare of players, this is important.
“So, one of the key things that we have been discussing, just to mention a few, in my recent visit to the PFAG office, is the establishment of the Standard Player Contract,” President Okraku stated at the dinner with the Legends event in Accra last Saturday
“I made a firm commitment towards this cause, we would cross the T’s very soon and hopefully in the new season, we would introduce standard player contact that would ultimately protect every signatory (players) to those contacts,” he added.
A Standard Player Contract (SPC) typically is negotiated as part of the collective bargaining agreement between a professional sports league and its players. These contracts typically are written in general, boilerplate form, and are used for all players in the league across competitions.
Professional Player contracts are fundamentally limited-duration employment contracts where teams agree to pay the player to train for and play a certain number of games in a season in exchange for the player’s unique skill set.
