Abedi Pele, Tony Yeboah feud cost Ghana 1992 AFCON – Odartey Lamptey

Former Black Stars forward Nii Odartey Lamptey has revisited the 1992 Africa Cup of Nations saga, blaming the feud between Abedi Pele and Odartey Lamptey as the cause of Ghana’s botched campaign in Senegal.

Odartey Lamptey told the Ernest Bruce Smith show that had things been smooth between the two players, Ghana would have won the trophy.

Odartey said that he did not pick a side in the power battle despite Tony Yeboah being his roommate.

“I was with Tony who was my roommate because I was an Ashanti boy. When it come to professional, I was in Europe with Abedi others. The problem was that everybody wanted to be a leader and that caused us the tournament. That thing caused our downfall. If Abedi was in the final, we would have won it. On the pitch they were cool but off the pitch, it was different. “

The 1992 story has been said repeated with different accounts of events that culminated in one of the biggest rows in Black Stars history.

Speaking about it in 2017, Tony Yeboah said that the late captaincy change affected the dressing room and resulted in Ghana losing the final on penalties to Ivory Coast.

”Nothing went wrong among the players during the 1992 tournament. It was the officials who were not honest to the players and that affected our performance on the pitch,” Yeboah told Graphic Sports.

”However, just before the match, our coach Otto Pfister told us in the dressing room that he had just been given a letter from Accra, indicating that the captain’s band should rather be given to Tony Baffoe.

”Everybody was shocked to hear that news, so some of the key players were very disturbed and came to console me that I should not worry.
”But I told them not to worry about the treatment meted out to me but rather focus on the match and put up their best.

”There was no transparency and honesty among our officials, and this eventually affected our play on the pitch. In football, any trivial thing can affect a team’s performance, and I can say that the action of officials in 1992 was the main cause of our failure to win the trophy for Ghana,” he added.