Ghana’s 2014 FA Cup finalists, Inter Allies FC, have publicly admitted for the first time that their players were complicit in the match-fixing scandal that rocked the 2020/21 Ghana Premier League season.
The scandal, which led to the club’s demotion to Division Two by the Ghana Football Association (GFA) in July 2021, stemmed from Inter Allies’ final league game against AshantiGold SC—an encounter that was widely believed to have been manipulated for betting purposes.
Speaking on Prime Take with Muftawu Nabila Abdulai, Inter Allies’ Technical Director, Willie Klutse, confirmed the involvement of the players, describing the internal findings as “disappointing.”
“I was not too worried, but I was disappointed in that group of players—that they would use their future in gambling. The playing body went to gamble with their match,” Klutse said.
When asked if he believed the players were directly involved in fixing the match, he replied affirmatively.
“It’s the players who told us. They said, ‘This one [player] bet, this one [player] bet,’ including our team manager. So we had to sack the whole team,” he revealed.
“In the end, I went to the Disciplinary Committee meeting. We [the administrators] were not the cause—it’s the players. We reported the players to the Nima Police Station and they said, once the thing is on national television, we should rather leave it to the GFA.”
According to Klutse, the club submitted a formal report to the GFA detailing the players’ confessions.
“We sent the story to the GFA. I was part of the group, and Dela [Delali Senaye]—we sent the message to the GFA that our players had done this.”
He expressed disappointment in the FA’s handling of the matter, insisting that Inter Allies were wrongly punished despite cooperating with the investigation.
“The FA were wrong in a way. They didn’t conduct their investigations well. We gave them our report, we gave them the lead, and we proved to them that we [the club] had no hand in it. But they came out with a wrong judgment. It’s not every judgment that is right. You can judge a case and be wrong—that’s why people go to appeal.”
He criticised the FA’s position that the players’ actions reflected on the club.
“The position of the FA was that the players went to play the match in the name of the club, and that was our fault.
“But excuse me to say, if you go and commit a crime, is it your family that sent you to commit the crime? They can come and arrest your father and mother, but after investigation, they’ll know that you’re a bad boy and deal with you alone and leave your family out. In this instance, the FA did not do that.
“If your father brings you to the police and tells them that you’ve committed a crime, why should they leave the kid and punish the father? That’s where I said the FA judged the matter wrongly.
“The entity, Inter Allies, arrested the players and presented evidence to the FA, but we rather got punished for trying to help their cause.”
Klutse further revealed that management had even promised incentives to motivate the players to win matches during their relegation battle.
“That day, we didn’t go with the team. We had five matches left to end the season, and we were fighting relegation. We told them that for each match they won, we would pay them GHC 1,000,” he said.
“But the betting was giving them more than the GHC 1,000 from us, so they snubbed our offer and chose betting. That was the reason we kept going down.”
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