Flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani, has attributed the recent poor performances of the Black Stars to the country’s failure of developing football from the youth level.
Mr. Mahama said this during his engagement with youth and women groups, chiefs, farmers and students in Bongo in the Upper East Region.
According to Mr. Mahama, colts football in the country has collapsed, leading to the compounding problems of the Black Stars.
“We just came from the Africa Cup of Nations and we performed abysmally because we are not growing our football. Before, we used to have the colts and every district used to organize its colts league and they picked the promising players from there. We used to have the academicals. The schools used to play against each other and we picked the promising players from there before we come to the U-17 and then all the other age groups. Unfortunately, all that gas collapsed and so we are going to work with the Football Association to start catching them young so that we can train them and give them to local teams to get experience.”
He noted that the Black Stars under his tenure will be mostly dominated by local players.
“We will build a new Black Stars based on homegrown players. Domestic players who have trained together for a long time and work as a team and then we will bring the foreign ones to come and blend with them. If you bring only foreign-based players who don’t play together, they play in their individual teams, and then when there’s time for competition you bring them and tell them to play it won’t work.
“The core of the Black Stars must be made up of domestic players who have played together for a long term, we keep camping them and they keep practicing together. So when it’s time for a competition we can bring some of the foreign players to join the domestic ones and you’ll see that we will have a better team.”
He further promised an overhaul at the GFA, explaining that “We are going to overhaul Ghana football in collaboration with the Ghana Football Association and all the football associations from the district up, you’re going to be busy because we will send you resources so that you can hold football galas in your districts to identify the players for us,” he continued.
“We will give these players scholarships, we will send them to secondary schools, we will watch them grow and eventually they will end up in the national teams.”
