Ex-Ghana coach Kwesi Appiah has revealed that he had a comprehensive plan to feed talented players into the national team who could play for the next 15 years but was curtailed by his pre-mature sacking.
The former Ghana captain said his main ambition was to groom more players for the senior national team to ensure consistent successes for the Black Stars over the next 15 years.
Appiah, who took full charge of the Black Stars in 2012 after being an assistant for several years, groomed new players for the Black Stars in his reign as the coach of the national team.
Christian Atsu, Jeffery Schlupp, Mubarak Wakaso, Solomon Asante, Baba Abdul Rahman and Rabiu Mohammed all gained their maiden call-ups under Appiah and he says he had plans for many more players.
“My ambition was to build a team that the nation will depend on for the next 10-15 years and if you recollect I was being criticized for not having a regular team because my team had new faces," Appiah told Starr FM
“It was good to invite new faces to build competition in the team so you don’t solely depend on some players.
"These dependants later bluff the country when they decide they won’t play again you see the whole country crying.
“So many of these players form the core of the team and it wasn’t about Kwesi Appiah but rather Ghana as a whole,” the 55-year-old current coach of Sudanese side Khartoum Al Watani added.
The calm tactician was appointed in 2012 after a thorough study of head coach Goran Stevanovic as an assistant coach.
Appiah’s reign saw Ghana to a fourth place finish at the Africa Cup of Nations in South Africa in 2013 and became the first indigenous coach to qualify the Black Stars to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.