Ghana striker Richmond Boakye-Yiadom believes that home-based players must work twice as hard as their European counterparts to be considered good enough to play for Black Stars.
Local players have had few opportunities to make an impact on the Black Stars team for a long time, displeasing some Ghanaians.
Augustine Okrah, Daniel Afriyie Barnie, and Dennis Korsah were the only home-based players called up for the Black Stars' 2023 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers against Madagascar and the Central African Republic, but none played.
“The local players have great talent. I was also a local player before I moved outside [Europe]. [If you are called up a local player] you have to have a ‘why?’. You need to ask, ‘why am I being called? Why am I part of the team now?’ So if you have a ‘why’ it makes you one of the best, if you don’t, you feel like they called me and I’m lucky. You come back and you are like, they called me to the Black Stars and you are just saying it,” he said.
“If you have the why and you go there [to the Black Stars camp], you greet the senior players, it’s okay but on the pitch, you make them aware you are not here to make friends, you are not there as a local player but you are here as a Black Stars player. You put the local player behind you because when you wear the jersey you are not a local player. Even though you play in the local league, but if you wear the jersey you are a Black Stars player.”
“If I am a local player and I come to the national team, I am coming to take what you’ve been enjoying in Europe. There has to be a competition. If the competition does not exceed the European player, you have a problem because the European player is coming with something that he is ahead of you in terms of equipment, exercise, sprinting level, and experience level, where the fans are full in the stadium with the confidence level,” he continued.
“When you go there, what do you show the coach that I am a local player but when you give me the opportunity I will swallow three or four players here. There has to be this mentality that why are playing and why are you in the national team. You are there because they picked you to be one of the best. You need to increase the level of your running and everything.
“As a coach, if I see a local player and a foreign-based player, you [as the local player] would need to prove yourself to me you are two times that him for me to put you there [in the team].”