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Kuffour, the boy from Kumasi, denies he is arrogant

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“I’m not arrogant and everybody who knows me, the players who know me, know the type of person I am,” Ghanaian football legend Sammy Osei Kuffour said in an answer to a question on his personality on e.tv Ghana’s Revealed programme.

Having had the privilege of interviewing the former Black Stars player on very personal issues at close range as well as from the outside, Kuffour’s personality appears to be one which is easily misunderstood.

For over an hour the former Bayern Munich star spoke nonchalantly about his past life, misdeeds, achievements and the sad times.

This was a mass departure from the controversial tag that Kuffour had assumed over the years: someone with a fiery temper and not afraid to speak his mind to officialdom on issues affecting him.

The most famous or maybe infamous incident was when Kuffour was expelled from the Black Star camp at the 2002 African Nations Cup on “disciplinary grounds” for allegedly leaving camp without permission.

“It was really horrible. You will be in a hotel where there is no shower in the room: you have to go and have your shower somewhere. You have to eat at the chop bar. You don’t even have one T-shirt to wear. For me it was not proper and perhaps it was good that I left the camp,” he said.

The appears to be a close link between Kuffour’s personality and his very tough upbringing in Ash Town, a suburb of Kumasi, where he lived with his mother and three sisters. These were the four people who had a great influence on his early life as Kuffour’s father lived in Canada at the time.

WEED SELLER

He admits to having a very challenging early life, having engaged in several misdeeds in his earlier years.

“I was a bad boy, a shoe shine boy, a wee seller. I did a lot of horrible things in my life,” he said.

But deep down, Sammy had a close relationship with his immediate nuclear family. His mother was a good source of inspiration for him, while his sisters made sure he went to school and did his chores.

Aside the usual fights with his sisters, the young Kuffour also found solace in playing football and started his career with Fantomas F/C, a colts club in Kumasi before being spotted by the charismatic Alhaji Karim Grunsah who signed him to King Faisal Babies.

But as Kuffour recalls, the turning point of his career came when he received a call up to the national under-17 team, the Black Starlets, in 1991. The problem, however, was that he had no football boots at the time. After much thought, the young Kuffour asked his mom for help to buy the footwear.

It came with a huge price though because Madame Abena sold the family TV in order to buy the pair of boots. As he recalls, his mom lied to his sisters about the sale of the TV set.

“My mom stood behind me and lied to my sisters that the TV was with the repairers but the TV was sold and I got the ¢7,000 to buy the boots. She really saw something in me even though at the time football was not that big,” he said.

That sacrifice was worth every pesewa because it opened the door to Kuffour’s stardom: the Black Starlets team eventually conquered the world in the Fifa World Cup in Italy with Kuffour first landing a contract with Italian outfit Torino.

BAYERN MUNICH

It was however at German giants Bayern Munich, that Kuffour had his big breakthrough.

The then German international Lothar Matthäus played a massive role in the deal as he offered to pay Kuffour’s transfer fee of $500,000.00 even though the club was not keen on paying such a hefty amount for a youngster.

German legend Franz Beckenbauer and Uli Hoeness were initially surprised about Matthäus’s interest but eventually gave in quite reluctantly. Kuffour went on to become the first African to play for Bayer Munich, winning a total of 17 titles with the Bavarians in a career spanning 12 years.

But, as Kuffour explains, it wasn’t an easy journey.

“We had about four German national team players playing with me but Franz Beckenbauer told me you have to play.”

“Every day, I had to give 120% to the team because I am from Africa. Sometimes even when I am sick, they have to give me injection so I can play,” he said.

He ranks Munich’s victory in the Uefa Champions League in 2001 as the highlight in his career, two years after their defeat to Manchester United in 1999. He believed the defeat could have been avoided had Lothar Matthäus not been substituted in the 70^th minute.

Overall, Kuffour’s tale is another classical rags to riches story.

At age 35, Kuffour is now a retired footballer and was recently appointed as a member of the Ghana Football Association’s Juvenile Committee.

He said he hoped to bring his immense experience to bear on the current generation of young players in the country through his work on the committee.

Source: Erasmus Kwaw, e.tv Ghana

Follow Erasmus Kwaw on Twitter

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