In the event that he wins the presidency in 2024, National Democratic Congress flagbearer John Dramani Mahama has alluded to intentions to form a new Black Stars squad composed of indigenous football players.
This follows Ghana's underwhelming showing at the most recent African Cup of Nations, where the squad was eliminated for the second time in a row at the group stage.
The former president blamed the lack of colts football, which helps early-stage football players develop, for the Black Stars' bad performance.
"We just came from the Africa Cup of Nations, and we performed abysmally. We performed abysmally because we are not growing our football," Mahama said.
"Before we used to have the colts and every district used to organize its colts’ league and they picked the prominent players from there. We used to have the academicals where the schools played against each other and we picked the promising players from there before we come to U-17 and then all the other age groups. Unfortunately, all that has collapsed and so we are going to work with the Football Association to start catching them young so that we can train them and give them to local teams to get experience.”
Mahama was giving a speech in Bongo as part of the NDC's "Building Ghana Tour" to youth and women's groups, chiefs, farmers, and students.
For the development of football, the neighborhood has asked that an artificial grass be built nearby.
The NDC flagbearer stated that the party will assemble the Black Stars from indigenous players in collaboration with the Ghana Football Association, while also considering the possibility of integrating certain Ghanaian players who are currently abroad.
"We will build a new Black Stars based on homegrown players, domestic players who have trained together for a long term and work as a team and then we bring the foreign ones to come and blend with them. If you bring only foreign-based players who don’t play together, they play in their individual teams and then when there’s time for competition you bring them and tell them to play it won’t work," he added.
"The core of the Black Stars must be made up of domestic players who have played together for a long term, we keep camping them and they keep practising together. So when it’s time for a competition we can bring some of the foreign players to join the domestic ones and you’ll see that we will have a better team."
In order to assist in improving the quality of the senior national squad once more, he also emphasized the necessity of changing the football atmosphere.
"We are going to overhaul Ghana football in collaboration with the Ghana Football Association and all the football associations from the district coming up you’re going to be busy because we will send you resources so that you can hold football galas in your districts to identify the players for us. We will give these players scholarships, we will send them to secondary schools, we will watch them grow and eventually they will end up in the national teams."
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