Black Maidens Captain and Ghana’s highest scorer at the FIFA under 17 World Cup, Mukarama Abdulai has denied wishing her colleague players bad in order to succeed. The star player of the Maidens team that got eliminated at the quarter finals of the just ended World Cup in Uruguay was reported to have stated that she prayed and wished that Spain’s Claudia Pina would get injured to enable her win the golden boot award at the tournament.
However,speaking on Diamond FM’s flagship sports program “Dema ni Yig’ jem Saha” on Sunday in Tamale, the Northern Ladies striker distanced herself from such unfortunate comments saying she was misconstrued.
When asked by host Mohammed Mutaka as to whether the reports of her wishing that Claudia Pina be injured and not score more goals than her, she said, “No, it’s not true, that journalist still calls me and sends me messages if I show you my phone to apologise for misrepresenting my views. He even called my coach to apologise for that.So it is not true, why will I wish my colleague player be injured before I can win an award?” She retorted.
Mukarama Abdulai stormed the World cup in Uruguay by scoring seven goals in Ghana’s four matches at the competition to steal the headlines when the team returned home. And at the time of Ghana’s exit from the tournament Spain’s Claudia Pina was on four goals. It was therefore the hope of many Ghanaians that she (Mukarama) is able to win the top scorer award. However, Claudia Pina managed to score one in the semi-final and two in the final to come on level terms with Mukarama but FIFA adjudged Mukarama as the top scorer because she played less matches than Pina. Mukarama also won the Bronze Ball at the competition for emerging as the third best player behind Spain’s Claudia Pina and Mexico’s Nicole Perez respectively.
But a report of her purportedly wishing Claudia Pina be injured and not reach her tally of seven goals went viral on social media last week after she granted an interview to a Kumasi based radio station. The said journalist captured her comments as such which led to several attacks on her for taking such a position.
Mukarama went further to say that the said journalist insisted she spoke twi in the said interview which according to her is a language she doesn’t understand very well and therefore cannot express herself in. It still remains unclear what the motive of this journalist was but one thing is clear, Mukarama says she didn’t say those comments.
Mukarama’s performance also earned her a nomination for the CAF women footballer of the year 2018 and one of her goals at the tournament against Uruguay is still in contention for the goal of the tournament award.
