Sports
To celebrate the project, an MP organised a ceremonial football match after commissioning the facility. There was only one problem.The pitch was too hot to play on.
Sometimes, one story says everything. As criticism of Ghana’s artificial football pitches continues, Godfred Akoto Boafo recalled an incident that left even him stunned.
“There was one of these astroturfs laid in the Northern Region,” he told Kafui Dey.
To celebrate the project, an MP organised a ceremonial football match after commissioning the facility.
There was only one problem.The pitch was too hot to play on.
“It was so hot that the MP himself and the game that he had organized could not be played,” Akoto Boafo revealed, laughing at the irony. “They left because it was too hot.”
The story has since become, for him, a powerful symbol of a deeper problem.
If a football pitch is only usable after sunset because daytime temperatures make it unbearable, can it truly serve the communities it was built for?
“I see people playing on them in the evenings,” he acknowledged, “because in the daytime it’s so hot.”
The episode raises uncomfortable questions about whether some infrastructure projects are designed around the realities of Ghana’s climate or simply around political visibility.
For Akoto Boafo, football facilities should encourage children to play whenever they are free, not force them to wait until the sun goes down.
His account of the abandoned commissioning match may sound amusing, but behind the laughter lies a serious concern: infrastructure that looks impressive in photographs is of little value if it cannot comfortably serve the people it was meant to benefit.
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“I got one football last year,” he said. “One football.” He contrasted that with reports of elite clubs receiving hundreds of footballs through association support.
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“Most of these things… after a year they are torn. There are holes in them. They are flying all over the area.” Replacing damaged turf, he noted, is expensive, leaving many communities stuck with unsafe and deteriorating playing surfaces.
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Community spaces where children once played freely have either vanished or become commercial facilities that charge users by the hour. “We’ve taken all that away,” he lamented. “Now we’re charging GH¢300 or GH¢400 to open these parks for just two hours.”
