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| Ghana's Premier League Champions Asante Kotoko - would they play in this year's GHALCA Top 4? |
Since 2001, the welfare body of premier and first division soccer clubs in Ghana, the Ghana League Clubs Association, also known as GHALCA has organised the annual preseason tournament dubbed 'The GHALCA Top 4.
According to GHALCA's own interpretations, the Top 4 tournament was introduced to fill the off-season vacuum between the end of one Premier League season and the next. This competition is opened to teams that placed first to fourth on the league table at the end of every football season.
The Top 4 concept was introduced to, among other things, help clubs that will represent Ghana in the competitions organised by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) as well as to help the rest of the Premier clubs prepare adequately for the upcoming season, raise money for the clubs and the association, to offer a platform for clubs to showcase and test the preparedness of their new players for the ensuing season.
The concept was embraced by all clubs at the time and has over the years, become a permanent feature on the annual football calendar, but after more than a decade, the Top 4 seems to have lost its relevance. The competition was once metamorphosed into a Top 8 and has encountered series of boycotts and several disagreements involving participating clubs.
It is palpably clear that the GHALCA Top 4 has outlived its relevance, most especially, in an era that the Top 4 clubs' places in Africa are not automatically guaranteed. Currently, CAF's allocations for Ghanaian clubs in the inter clubs competitions varies and are always based on the performances of Ghana's clubs in the previous editions of the CAF competitions.
Even, in the case of CAF allocating four slots for Ghanaian clubs in the inter clubs competitions, only the first and second placed clubs in the league would be guaranteed a place in the CAF Champions League while the CAF Confederations Cup slots would be allocated to the first and second placed teams in the FA Cup.
Therefore, one wonders why GHALCA still organises the competition, even in the mixed of sponsorship difficulties. Arguably, The Top 4 is no longer lucrative to corporate organisations in Ghana and therefore behoves the GHALCA to inject some innovations into their attempts to help clubs prepare adequately for the forthcoming season.
Since GHALCA wants every Ghanaian to believe the Top 4's main agenda is to help all 16 premier clubs to prepare for the season ahead, this writer humbly Suggests that GHALCA should rather collaborate with the Ghana Football Association (GFA) to revive the erstwhile seasonal opening Gala competition for all premier clubs. At least, that will be a perfect platform for the clubs to parade their new signings and also showcase their new jerseys for the forthcoming season. It could be a little innovation to hype the First Capital Plus Premier League!!!
I am pretty sure a three-day gala competition involving all the 16 clubs on one stage will be attractive enough. Companies will surely like to associate themselves with a whole weekend (Friday - Sunday) of a soccer jamboree.
I believe the Gala competition involving all the 16 premier clubs will ultimately meet GHALCA's agenda of helping clubs to measure their level of readiness as well as putting finishing touches to their teams before the season begins.
Financially, all 16 clubs will benefit from the competition as compared to the Top 4 that is only beneficial to the four competing clubs.
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| Accra Hearts of Oak likely to play in the GHALCA Top 4 |
