Former Ghana President John Mahama pledges to build Black Stars around home-based players after disastrous AFCON 2023.
Former Ghanaian president John Mahama has outlined plans to construct a new-look Black Stars squad centred on domestic players if elected.
Pulse Sports Nigeria reports that the Presidential hopeful made the promise after Ghana’s disastrous outing at the 34th Africa Cup of Nations, AFCON2023.
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Mahama on Ghana’s Black Stars
In a statement on a video on Twitter, Mahama insisted that the core of the Black Stars must be made by domestic players under his leadership following what he described as a ‘disastrous and abysmal’ AFCON 2023 campaign.
“We just came from the AFCON, and we performed abysmally, disastrously,” Mahama stated in the video posted by GTV Ghana.
“We performed abysmally because we are not growing our football and so, we are going to work with the football association to start catching them young so that we can train and give them to local teams to play, get experience before they even want to travel abroad.”
Mahama vowed to "build the new Black Stars based on homegrown players", rather than the recent reliance on foreign-based talent.
“We will build the next Black Stars based on homegrown players,” he added. “Domestic players who have trained players for a long time and worked together as a team and then, we would bring the foreign ones to come blend with them.”
Mahama's pledge comes with Ghana still reeling from a second successive Africa Cup of Nations disaster as the Black Stars failed to make it beyond the group stages in Cote d’Ivoire.
With Ghanaians demanding an overhaul of the national team, Mahama is promising to enact change by cultivating local talent to revitalize the country's soccer fortunes.
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