'You are not alone': Frimpong on his special trip to Ghana

Pathways supports female and male football players aged 15 to 22, who have not made the step up to professional level in their professional and personal development off the pitch. In an interview with bayer04.de, Frimpong talks about his motivation for the project and a very moving moment.

04 questons for Jeremie Frimpong

Jeremie, how did the idea for this project come about?

Frimpong: The key element was the time when I was younger. Football clubs decided whether my friends and I would be professional football players or not. They gave you a contract if you were good enough. But if you weren't then they would just drop you. Football was everything to us. But when I saw that lots of my friends were hung out to dry it was as if their whole life had been taken away from them from one day to the next. So I had the idea of Pathways. It's basically a sort of backup support and a chance for a new start. Anybody can contact us and register their interest. We then help to develop them in terms of work and also help make a new start on a personal level. We introduce them to the right people, inform them about possible areas of work, study courses and careers and support them in interviews.

What have you been able to achieve with Pathways so far?

Frimpong: At the start, we mainly helped out in Ghana but now we are also active in Germany, the Netherlands and England – it's crazy. And our team is getting bigger and bigger, even one of my former teammates I played alongside at Manchester city, is working with us – he deals with the enquiries from English players.

How was your visit to Pathways in Ghana?

Frimpong: We visited two football teams in Dansoman and played football with them on a shale pitch. I really saw a lot of good players there but in Africa they don't have the same chance of being spotted as they would at a performance centre in Europe. We had lots of fun. But we also talked a lot and I tried to level with them: "You are not alone, I have a team who can help you. We also talked about it obviously being great to be a footballer. You gain recognition, a lot of people admire you, pick you for EA Sports teams and the like. But that's not what it's all about in the end. The most important thing is for them to be on the pitch and enjoy football. I tried to convey that to them.

Was there a moment you particularly remember?

Frimpong: We visited an orphanage and that really moved me. I bought them food, we sat together and I asked lots of them what they would like to be. The small children there didn't know me at all but they came straight to me and wanted me to take their hands. They showed me so much warmth. In spite of their situation and the whole environment they were so full of joy. They smiled and we just played football and were happy.

Further information on Pathways is avaialble HERE.