It is really embarrassing- Stephen Appiah on Ghana’s youth football decline

Former Black Stars captain Stephen Appiah has labelled Ghana’s failure to qualify and challenge for top honours at the youth level as embarrassing.

The former Juventus man appeared before the Parliamentary select committee on Tuesday, as they probed into issues hindering development of Sports in Ghana and providing solutions to curtail them.

Appiah was a member of Ghana’s U-17 side who beat Brazil 3-2 in Ecuador’s 1995 showpiece to clinch the country’s second and last U-17 tournament.

In addressing the steep decline of Ghana football, Appiah cited the Black Starlets failure to qualify for the 2023 U-17 showpiece.

“It is really embarrassing that Ghana today we can’t qualify to play the Under-17 World Cup. Major tournament we are not part of it and we have talents all around. Today if we said, let’s go to Kawukudi, even gutter to gutter, you’ll see four talents there. As they said, we have to set some people to go out there to search for talents”.

Stephen Appiah further added that, creating a good scouting network which transcends the boarders of Accra, will be a significant step in finding future national assets.

“We think that all the best players are from this side, no. When you go to BA [Brong Ahafo], the North, that’s where you see the real talent, so we have to try and spend more to get players who can represent the country in the future”.

The Black Starlets have not qualified for the U-17 World Cup tournament since bowing out of the 2017 edition in the quarter-finals – and failed to reach the group stages of the African U-17 championship after finishing fourth at the WAFU Zone B tournament on home soil in June.

By Andrews Sefa Bamfo

The post It is really embarrassing- Stephen Appiah on Ghana’s youth football decline first appeared on 3News.

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