Godfred Yeboah
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On Tuesday, August 3, many Ghanaians sacrificed their sleep to watch two athletes – Samuel Takyi and Joseph Paul Amoah – take pride in defending the flag in respective events at the ongoing Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Little did they know that a former Black Stars defender Godfred Yeboah was in the hospital battling for his life, and around 6:00am reports started trickling in that he was dead.

Yeboah could not recover from an illness he had been battling for almost a month, according to reports, and died at the Sunyani Regional Hospital, where he was receiving treatment.

https://twitter.com/AsanteKotoko_SC/status/1422469977358151696?s=20

He brought his excellent playing career to an end in 2012. Since then, little was heard from him, not even a hint of him being unwell and his demise has thrown the football fraternity into a state of mourning.

Tributes have been pouring in for the Sunyani-born left-back. Interestingly, anybody who mentions Godfred Yeboah adds TV3, as seen on TV3’s official Twitter handle and many others.

https://twitter.com/tv3_ghana/status/1422557933347512331?s=20

TV3 is Yeboah’s nickname and perhaps more popular than the real name.

How Yeboah earned the popular moniker

Yeboah grew up in Sunyani and as someone passionate about football, he took it up as a full-time job. He was so good that he rose from amateur to professional in no time.

The striking part is that, during the early stage of his career, his nickname wasn’t TV3, as revealed by ace sports journalist Sadick Adams, who followed Godfred’s career literally from start to finish.

“He [Godfred Yeboah] started his career with Alako so, a Zongo-based club before moving to BA United at a very early age. So, around 1998, he joined the BA United senior team in the Premier League, before they were relegated and came back and he was poached by Asante Kotoko. But in Sunyani he was popularly known as Dada because he was named after his dad,” Obama shared with 3news.com.

At 20, Yeboah joined Kotoko and spent nine seasons, winning three Ghana Premier League titles and played an instrumental role in their march to the 2004 Caf Confederation Cup final, where they were beaten on penalties by Hearts of Oak. 

It was at Kotoko that he earned the nickname but how?

Obama narrated: “When he came to Kotoko in the year 2000-2001 in the league and Caf Champions League, he was so spectacular. He was to me somehow the originator of sliding tackle on the left wings as a defender.

“It was hard for a defender to go in for such tackles without committing blunders and fouls. He was so excellent at that, to the extent that anytime he went in for a sliding tackle, it was so clear that he did not touch the striker or opposing player.

“His tackling on the turf was so clear, his style of play was very unique and that was the time that TV3 had also come. From 1997, 1998 and as at 2000 and 2001, TV3 was the clearest of all TV networks in Ghana. You could watch the other television stations but it wasn’t too clear. You could only see pictures and maybe black and white.

“But TV3 had such brilliant colours, to the extent that, anyone who watches TV3 knows that this was the clearest TV station in Ghana. So he was compared in Kumasi to TV3. ‘This guy’s tackles are like TV3’, so that’s how he got the name. When Kotoko went into Caf Confederation Cup, the name was popularised because a lot of the matches were shown on TV3,” he concluded.

Yeboah had stints with AshantiGold and Wa All Stars (Now Legon Cities) before he retired about nine years ago.

Source: Enoch Fiifi Forson|3news.com|Ghana

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