Flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress, John Dramani Mahama, has indicated plans to build a new Black Stars team around homegrown footballers if elected President in the 2024 elections.
The decision comes in response to Ghana’s disappointing performance at the recent African Cup of Nations, where the team exited the competition at the group stage for the second consecutive time.
Former President Mahama attributed the Black Stars‘ poor performance to the absence of colts football, which plays a crucial role in developing footballers at the early stages.
“We just came from the Africa Cup of Nations, and we performed abysmally. We performed abysmally because we are not growing our football,” observed Mahama.
“Before we used to have the colts and every district used to organize its colts’ league and they picked the prominent players from there. We used to have the academicals where the schools played against each other and we picked the promising players from there before we come to U-17 and then all the other age groups. Unfortunately, all that has 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.”
During a community engagement at Bongo as part of the NDC’s “Building Ghana Tour,” John Dramani Mahama addressed the community’s request for the construction of an astro turf for football development.
The NDC flagbearer pledged that if elected, together with the Ghana Football Association, they will build the Black Stars with homegrown players. Mahama emphasized the importance of nurturing talent at the grassroots level and did not discount the possibility of blending them with some foreign-based Ghanaian players.
“We will build a new Black Stars based on homegrown players, domestic players who have trained together for a long term and work as a team and then we 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,” he added.
“We will build a new Black Stars based on homegrown players, domestic players who have trained together for a long term and work as a team and then we 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,” he added.