No Quality In The Local League � Sports Minister

Deputy Minister for Youth and Sports Honorable Joseph Yamin says the non inclusion of any local based players in the 25 man squad released by Coach Akwasi Appiah for the two legged playoff against Egypt clearly shows the non availability of good materials in the local league. Black Stars coach Akwasi Appiah did not include any local players in his provisional squad released yesterday despite calls by a section of the media to invite some local players to replace the suspended Harrison Afful and injured Jonathan Mensah who are not in the squad. A late injury to central defender John Boye raised questions on who was likely to join the party against Egypt but no replacement seemed to be found from the local league in Ghana. The deputy minister said �We are looking at quality of players for the national team, so if we have no local player playing for the Black Stars at this particular point in time then this calls for a lot of improvement in our local league here in Ghana. Knowing very well that there is a new FIFA law that says that a player who makes it to the senior national team that qualifies for the World Cup from the local league gives the local team some remunerations from FIFA so I think that this should be one of the motivations for the local league to improve so players from the local level will have access to play for the national team so that the teams will also benefit from that." He added that "As it stands now these are the players the coach feels he wants to use and you can mean it any form that you want but it clearly shows how unattractive our local league is. A player like Mahatma Otoo was our top scorer last year and I think he should not have left the country to play abroad so soon but I believe he left because of the state of the league we have here in Ghana so this clearly tells you how much work needs to be done if we want call ups of local players into the senior national team�.