No special treatment for local players in Black Stars selection - Akwasi Appiah

Published on: 08 January 2014
No special treatment for local players in Black Stars selection - Akwasi Appiah
Ghana coach Akwasi Appiah

By Ameenu Shardow, follow on Twitter @alooameenu

Ghana coach Akwasi Appiah says local players must prove themselves worthy of Black Stars call ups and not expect any special dispensation as against the foreign-based players.

Appiah’s appointment in 2012 was heralded with the hope of giving more opportunities to locally-based players.

And despite his earlier invites which featured quite an appreciable number of players from the domestic top flight, there is no player in the latest Black Stars team to have come from the domestic leagues.

The Black Stars team that beat Egypt impressively over two legs in the World Cup playoffs were all foreign-based with no single contribution from even the domestic top flight.

The situation is increasingly sparking fears that players need to travel abroad to get any chance of playing the in national team as the domestic competitions are not deemed relatively strong enough.

It also encourages the rising rate of player exodus from the Ghanaian top flight which further erodes the quality of the domestic championships.

But Akwasi Appiah says the only way out is for locally-based players to get an equal look in into the national team is to prove they as good as the ones called up from teams abroad.

“I keep saying that the performance of local players keep improving,” he told Metro FM.

“It is the reason I have been going round the various league centres and also travelling to South Africa for the CHAN tournament to monitor them.

“But in selecting a local player, you have to be sure that they play better than the foreign-based ones.

“It is not a case of this is a local player and this is a foreign-based player, it is about performance.

“If the performance of the local once prove better than the ones from abroad, then yes, they will have an equal opportunity.”

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