Former Black Stars forward Augustine Arhinful has dismissed claims that all footballers live luxurious lifestyles during their playing days and forget to invest in their future, therefore having nothing to fall back on in retirement.
The issue has reared its head again after former Hearts of Oak and Asante Kotoko player Agyemang Duah became the beneficiary of a cash donation for his ailment. He is said to be battling stroke.
Speaking on Onua FM on Wednesday, November 29, Augustine Arhinful said relatives and friends of some of these footballers are to blame for their plight.
He opened up on how his businesses were mismanaged by persons he had trust in, sending money to them for his supposed businesses while plying his trade abroad.
“I will advise [the current footballers] that if you are not sure, get a fixed deposit or treasury bill or bond or property and save your money and when you retire you find a business to invest in,” the man who played in Germany, Switzerland, Portugal and Turkey stated on phone in an interview.
“Because I have gone through it before,” he told host Alfred Takyi Mensah on Onua FM‘s Sports Center on Wednesday.
“I used to be one of the key distributors for Ghana when it comes to Unilever and Nestle. The whole Ghana we were just about 10 or 9 major distributors.
“If I tell you the volumes of money that went in but today the business is no more because the people that I entrusted the money to them including my lawyer who is supposed to help us, did their own personal thing to the extent that the business collapsed.”
He mentioned how “a whole aluminium factory that I had with a partner collapsed”.
He, therefore, cautioned those criticising some of these footballers who appear to have nothing left to sustain them in retirement to be modest in their criticism.
He said the same critics are those who mismanage the investments of the players while they were active.
“A lot of people in these players’ lives do not help.
“Some of us have gone through this phase of life. People you felt are your brothers, family members, disappoint and disappoint greatly and sometimes you don’t want to help anybody again and those people will turn round and speak ill of you to people.”
