Black Stars head coach, Charles Kwablan Akonnor has highlighted a growing gap between local-based players and their foreign-based colleagues in the senior national team setting.
Akonnor, who replaced Kwasi Appiah as coach of the Ghana senior men’s team in January, says he is committed to giving opportunities to local professionals but must bridge the gap by showing self-belief and readiness to compete for places.
In a recent media engagement with the Ghana Football Association Communications Department, the Black Stars gaffer posited:
“It’s up to the locals [home-based players to be confident in exhibiting their strengths]; we [technical team] will give them the chance. We’ll encourage them.”
He continued: “Even I had plans before we assembled the team. I have a psychologist to talk to them before they join the camp. The challenge was up to them, I will like to give the chance to the locals more.”
Akonnor further challenged the local-based players to up their determination and strive to be consistent and cited an example with Kotoko’s Justice Blay.
“They should believe that they are coming to play. Not even to be on the bench and that will show automatically at training.
“These are the kind of things, they would have to do and it has to come from the individual. Yes, we’ve seen them, I’m not going to close my eyes on them, once they are doing well.”
“Someone like Blay looks active and wants to be successful when you watch him play.
“My research tells me no player in the local scene has been able to be consistent for 3–4 matches – the first match on the high, second middle and third you drop, and fourth on the high, no!. They need to be consistent in their performance and they will automatically get in there.”
Akonnor, who has worked as head coach with six Ghana Premier League clubs, added his own experience of joining the Black Stars camp and how some senior teammates assisted him before travelling outside the country.
“I started playing [for the Black Stars] as a local player before traveling outside the country. When I started playing, the likes of Frimpong Manso, Armah Senegal (and other senior guys). It has changed there’s a big gap; when you see the locals with the foreign-based players, there’s a big gap.
In naming his first Ghana squad on March 3, 2020, CK Akonnor gave slots to four local-based professional players.
Aduana Stars’ Yahaya Mohammed, Habib Mohammed of Asante Kotoko, Kwadwo Amoako of Ashantigold SC and Richard Attah of Hearts of Oak were the four local-based professionals to have earned slots in CK Akonnor’s first list.
