In light of the Black Stars’ recent AFCON disappointment, former president and National Democratic Congress (NDC) flagbearer John Dramani Mahama is eager to bring back Ghanaian football.
Ghana lost all three of their group matches and was eliminated at the group stage. The Black Stars placed third in Group B after drawing two games and losing one.
The dominant team from West Africa has suffered in recent tournaments; at the AFCON 2023 in Cameroon and the AFCON 2023 in Ivory Coast, it was eliminated in the group round. The team did not get it to the round of 16 in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Once elected in the next general elections, Mahama claims that his administration will work with the Ghana Football Association to turn around the country’s flagging football industry.
“We just came from the Africa Cup of Nations and we performed abysmally, disastrously and we performed abysmally because we are not growing our football, so we are going to work with the football association to start catching them young so we can train them and give them to local teams. They will play and get experience before they will even travel abroad” he said.
“We will build the new Black Stars based on home grown players who have trained together for a long time and work as a team and then, we bring the foreign ones to blend with them”
“If you bring only foreign players, they don’t play together, they play individual teams and then, when it time for competition you bring them to play for the country, it won’t work. The core of the Black Stars must be made by domestic players, who have played together for a long time”
“I’m going to overhaul Ghana football in collaboration with the football association” he added.