Awuah Nyamekye explains why Tony Baffoe was named Ghana captain in 1992 AFCON final

Former Ghana Football Association president, Awuah Nyamekye has opened up on why Tony Baffoe was named as the captain to lead the Black Stars in the 1992 Africa Cup of Nations final.

Ghana’s ambition of winning their fifth African Cup hit a snag after losing 11-10 on penalties against Ivory Coast.

A chunk of the players that participated in the tournament in Senegal including Tony Yeboah and Sarfo Gyamfi attributed their defeat in the final to captaincy rift.

Substantive captain Abedi Pele was suspended for the match against Ivory Coast due to accumulation of cards and Yeboah, whom many people thought was the assistant, was supposed to lead the team on the field.

However, a last-minute decision from authorities saw Tony Baffoe handed the armband.

In an interview with Don Summer of Angel FM in Kumasi, the former FA boss shared that they needed a compromised captain in the absence of Abedi Pele to lead the team and for that matter, settled on Tony Baffoe.

“In fact, the FA appealed to Abedi Pele’s suspension with an amount of $600 but it couldn’t materialized so he was definitely going to miss the final and so we needed to select a player who will lead the team with Abedi’s absence.”

“So we selected three people to dialogue and come out with a captain. They were Benjamin Larson (Management Committee Member), Alhaji Mekano (Welfare Officer) and the coach, Otto Pfister. So it was these three people that recommended Tony Baffoe and we support it and this does not mean we hate Tony Yeboah”

“If Kwesi Appiah was available for the final there wouldn’t be an issue because he could have lead the team since he was the assistant. However, we needed to search for a compromised captain that will be acceptable for that particular match and the player we settled on was Tony Baffoe” he said.

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