James Eduful, popularly known as Coach Sympathy, was born in November of 1989, in a small town called Koduakrom in the Tarkwa-Damang District of the Western Region.
At age seven, just like many Ghanaian boys at his age, James had a dream of becoming a football star but one evening in 1996, that dream turned into a nightmare as his life changed forever.
“I was returning from the farm with my mother and it was raining heavily. I was six or seven years old, so I couldn’t walk through the heavy rain and my mother carried me on her back.
“But she slipped, and I fell off her back and it was not until we got home that we realised I had fractured my legs. My parents tried to fix it with traditional medicine because they didn’t have money to take me to the hospital, and as you can see, that didn’t work out and now I’m crippled,” James narrated in an interview on Asempa FM’s SportsNite show.
Coach Sympathy’s unforeseen predicament, however, did not stop him from attaining the higher heights he had always dreamt of.
”I always wanted to play football, but I couldn’t. I started playing for a while with both hands but my family cautioned that I could lose my arms too if I got injured on the field. So, I became a coach instead,” he said.
His coaching journey started at the age of 12 at Tarkwa Darman (Koduakrom).
At that time, his aunt and uncle didn’t support the idea, according to them, they have not seen a disabled person like him coaching before.
Mr Eduful completed senior high school in 2007 but with no money to further his education, he took a drastic decision to leave home to establish a youth team.
In 2007, Coach Sympathy set up a colt’s team at Tafo in Kumasi, training players from U-10 up to U-17.
To demonstrate to his players just what he demanded of them, James left the ‘comfort’ of his wheelchair, strapped his hands with slippers as makeshift football boots, and joined the action.
Supported by one feeble leg and two hands — almost like a four-legged human – he moved fluidly into spaces, knocking passes around as he received them.
For the last decade, this has been the story of James Eduful, the coach dishing out tactics on a wheelchair in Ghana football.
Coach Sympathy explains he’s had several offers from other clubs owing to his success with a Kasoa-based club whose fortunes he turned around.
However, he was denied the opportunity to work with those teams because he had only one certificate, which is a juvenile course he did and wanted to study for other courses to enhance his certificate but he had no money.
Against this backdrop, the Asempa FM SportsNite team, headed by Prof. E.K Wallace, immediately after hearing this sad story invited Eduful to the flagship evening sports program where the coach revealed the secrets behind his situation and his dreams of becoming one of the top-notch coaches in the country.
James Eduful, as he wheels himself up and down the touchline, did the same on the day he was entering the premises of Asempa FM; at a point, he does the Quadrupedal movement, thus, crawling on the floor all the way into the studio.
He believes the recognition and the help coming is a result of Asempa FM [SportsNite] giving him the platform to demonstrate to the world what he can do.
“I will thank you [Asempa FM] a lot; the opportunity you gave me made more people hear of me. I also thank Prosper Harrison Addo [GFA General Secretary]. I had a chat with him on Facebook and he made me aware that he has already heard about me on Asempa FM [SportsNite].
“He [Prosper] told me he’s talked about me with his boss [Kurt Okraku] and they had decided to help me. So very fortunate for me the CAF License D Coaching Course was ongoing in the country so they promised to help me,” he acknowledged.
Hearts of Oak talisman, Gladson Awako, who was with Sympathy during the CAF Licensing D Course also showered him with praises.
“Most of the colleagues during the training used to come to me for a picture, but I went to him personally and I told him I want to take a picture with him.
“We see a lot of people in this condition on the road, some are beggars; but to see that he has realised there is something he can do to fulfil his dream on earth and also cater for his family without going to the street to beg, I respected that and that pushed me to get closer [to him],” he lauded.
Ghana Football Association (GFA) General Secretary, Prosper Harrison Addo, also on the SportsNite show thanked Eduful for recognising their help.
“My conversation with him has been private, it wasn’t intended to come out. We [GFA] didn’t assist him for public consumption, but all the same, if he has come out to thank us, we also thank him.
“I normally chat with him, I like him so much and the president [Kurt Okraku] also likes him. We have been monitoring what he is doing, sometimes we send people to go and watch him without his knowledge.
“I think he contacted me on Facebook, we chat and we encourage each other in the industry. He said that this is what he wants to do, and in fact, he has been doing it for some time now, he trains a lot of the youth so we only assisted him to get the requisite know-how and the certification,” he said.
He added: “If you would remember, GFA issued a statement that going forward, every team in Ghana should be trained by a licensed coach. We are seriously enforcing that policy so we can’t say he should be exempted while he trains footballers.”
Eduful, 32, has three beautiful children; Favour Nyamekye Eduful, Success Nyamekye Eduful and Princess Nyamekye Eduful, with his partner Mary Nordjo.
Despite his incredible feat, accommodation has been his main problem making his stay in Accra difficult.
