Ghana FA president Okraku sheds light on national teams’ technical shake-up

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The GFA boss provides insights into recent developments at the West Africans’ national teams

Ghana Football Association (GFA) president Kurt Okraku reveals the outfit’s reason to overhaul the technical team of all its national teams is to inject new life into the nation’s sport.

A publication on Friday says the football’s governing body has dissolved all coaching units of both male and female teams.

Black Stars coach James Kwasi Appiah, home-based Black Stars trainer Maxwell Konadu, men’s U23 boss Ibrahim Tanko and senior national women’s team coach Mercy Tagoe-Quarcoo are among the casualties.

“We have not been as competitive as we want to be in all our national levels. We need to find ways to be competitive, bring the love back and bring the teams back into the finals and in the end, win trophies. This is what the [GFA Executive] Council also aims to achieve [and] that is why this [overhaul] was done,” Okraku told Joy FM.

“I believe that Ghana is one of the biggest football nations and has qualities across the board – coaches, players – personnel across the board from which reason I believe that Ghana must appear at every cup competitions be it at the youth stage – U14, U17 levels – and also at the biggest mundial [Fifa World Cup].

“When we do not appear I am overly worried and I believe we have to be at every tournament.”
Ghana’s male U17 and U20 coaches, as well as women’s U17 and 20 coaches, have also been affected by the latest development. 

“The other bit is that we have to be competitive to be able to win. We used to be very dominant at U17 level, we used to appear at the U20 World Cup quite regularly,” Okraku continued.

“U23 we have always struggled, perhaps for reasons that I don’t know.

‘But in the next four years I want us to win trophies and that will be the challenge to all the head trainers that we will be engaging in the next few days, not weeks.”

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Ghana’s last major trophy at any level of international football remains their success at the 2009 Fifa U20 World Cup in Egypt.

The Black Stars, the nation’s elite team, last won a major title in 1982, the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) in Libya. 

They failed to make the quarter-final of the tournament for the first time since 2006 at the 2019 championship in Egypt and could not qualify for the 2018 Fifa World Cup after a disappointing showing at the 2014 gathering in Brazil.

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