Management Committee Chairman of the Black Stars B Eddie Doku has rebuffed calls for Maxwell Konadu's dismissal following his failure to qualify the team to the 2018 CHAN tournament in Kenya.
Konadu has been faced with criticisms from all quarters of the nation's football fraternity after leading the local based senior national team to a 4-3 aggregate defeat against the Stallions of Burkina Faso which ended their hope of qualifying the CHAN competition in Kenya next year.
However, Eddie Doku thinks otherwise and claimed that the blame shouldn't be placed solely at the door step of the former Asante Kotoko trainer because he's only a deputy coach.
“Why should he be sacked when he was only working under Coach Kwasi Appiah? I don’t think anybody should be sacked,” stated the Greater Accra RFA chairman during an interview with the Graphic Sports yesterday.
Mr Doku explained that Ghana played against a more experienced Burkinabe side with over 50 per cent of the players being part of their main national team, as against a relatively inexperienced Black Stars B side, most of whom wore the national colours for the first time.
“The Burkina Faso team has been together for long and our team is just a young team that was put together recently and are playing competitive matches for the first time,” he noted.
“We are now building a team and I can tell you that, apart from Awal Mohammed and Joseph Addo, most of our players wore the Black Stars jersey for the second time,” he emphasised.
Mr Doku said the Stars B coaches could not be properly assessed with just two matches, while insisting that he believed in the ability of both Appiah and Konadu in their team-building process.
As a result, it would be too early for anybody to call for the head of any of the coaches, particularly Konadu, who was only an assistant.
“Why should we sack Maxwell Konadu when he was not the man in charge,” he enquired.
While apologising to Ghanaians for the disappointment, Mr Doku said the defeat was not due to lack of motivation because the team had some enticing incentives from the government.
He seized the opportunity to express gratitude to the state for supporting the team.