FA Vice President Fred Pappoe has described as misleading, assertions made by Ghana international, Isaac Boakye that an official invitation was not extended him to feature for the Black Stars in a friendly this year.
The VFL Wolfsburg player last week granted several interviews to both local and the international media suggesting he never received an official call to play for the senior team in a recent international game.
But Fred Pappoe, who also chairs the management team of the Black Stars management committee, says the player’s claims are “absolutely untrue.”
“It is rather unfortunate for Isaac Boakye to claim that he never received any invitation because that is absolutely untrue,” Fred Pappoe responded during an iterview with www.ghanafa.org.
“We sent invitation letters to his club on every occasion we invited him but not once did he even have the courtesy of responding to our invitation and subsequent phone calls.”
According to the FA Vice President, the Football Association always ensures that the due process in calling up players were followed.
He explained that like all call ups, an invitation is sent to a player’s club first and after the club acknowledges receipt of the letter indicating the availability or otherwise of the player, the FA follows up with travelling arrangements to the player.
“We did all these and Wolfsburg acknowledged receipt of the letters and the availability of the player but Boakye never responded and also failed to reply our telephone calls and text messages when we tried to reach him to confirm his travelling details”.
Isaac Boakye was included in Claude Le Roy’s 20-man party for February’s international friendly with Nigeria but the player failed to show up even though his club in an official response to the FA on 23rd January prior to the game acknowledged receipt of the FA’s letter inviting the attacker.
“With your fax of 22nd January you invited our player Isaac Boakye to take part of the mentioned international friendly match on February. 06th 2007.
“We informed the player about this and will release him as of the 04th February, 2007.
“Please send us his flight details in order to give the final release,” Wolfsburg’s Manager, Klaus Fuchs in a response to the FA’s invitation.