Former Ghana international, Augustine Ahinful has cautioned people who are on a mission trumpeting for the inclusion of local based players into the Black Stars.
The former Ankaragücü striker went ahead to state that while local talents should be considered, they might not be able to put in the performance needed on the international terrain.
Ahinful, however, cited the contributions of foreign-based players - insisting that their experience and exposure to top competitions plays a crucial factor in the Black Stars success.
''So, the local players, yes, we can look at the best ones and select them into the national team, but we can't say that we should use the local players alone to play the national team,” he told Graphic Sports.
Ahinful, who have 19 caps under his sleeves for the Black Stars during his heydays highlighted the abysmal performance of the local Black Stars during the recent Championship of Africa Nations (CHAN) tournament in Algeria as a typical case study.
Ghana failed to forge past the group stage, propelling Ahinful to question the readiness of local players to compete at the top level without the assistance of their more experienced colleagues.
''Somewhere last year there was this CHAN competition in Algeria and our local Black Stars were there and we didn't even qualify from the group stage. We saw how the players performed and now are we saying the same players should come and play at the AFCON?” he queried.
''I'm not saying some of them don't deserve to be in the team. I'm saying that some of the players should be in the national team to gain experience in order to build themselves into the team proper, but we cannot invite the Black Stars and say we are using only the local players'', he noted.
''Gone were the days when players were very mature. Those days all the backline players of the national team were all locally-based. When I started following the national team almost 80 per cent were local based because professional football outside of Ghana was not really common,'' he said.
By: Pascal Amoah
