National Democratic Congress (NDC) Flagbearer, John Dramani Mahama, has revealed his commitment to rejuvenating the Black Stars by prioritizing local players.
Addressing the team’s recent dismal performance at the African Cup of Nations, Mahama emphasized the need to nurture and train young talent within the country.
Expressing dissatisfaction with Ghana’s football development, Mahama outlined plans to collaborate with the Football Association to identify and develop young players from an early age. He emphasized the importance of catching them young, providing them with local exposure, and gradually integrating them into the national team.
“We just came from the African Cup of Nations and we performed abysmally disastrously. We performed abysmally because we are not growing our football and so and we are going to work with the Football Association to start catching them young from when they are young so that we can train them and give them to local teams they will play get experience before if they even want to travel abroad they can travel”
The former president highlighted the challenges of relying solely on foreign-based players who may not have significant playing time together. Mahama believes that a core of domestic players, well-practiced and familiar with each other, will form the foundation of a stronger Black Stars.
“We will build the new Black Stars based on homegrown players domestic players who have trained together for a long time and worked as a team. And then we will bring the foreign ones to come and blend with them. If you bring only foreign players they don’t play together in their teams and then when it is time for competition you bring them and come and tell them to play if won’t work.”
Acknowledging the need for an overhaul in Ghana’s football landscape, Mahama expressed his commitment to working closely with the Ghana Football Association (GFA) to implement these changes.
“The core of the Black Stars must be made of domestic players who have played together for a long time we keep camping them and they keep practising together and when we are going to a competition we can bring some of the foreign players to join the domestic players and you see that we will have a better team and so we are going to overhaul Ghana football in collaboration with the Ghana Football Association,” he added.
Ghana’s recent AFCON campaign ended with a group-stage exit, prompting the call for a strategic shift in the approach to building a competitive national team.
