GFA Must Replicate This Successful Model To Produce Top Talents For National Teams

Former Ghana international, Emmanuel Agyemang-Badu, has given his support behind the re-visitation of grassroots development as a vital stage towards the growth of football in Ghana.

Badu said this model groom a steady stream of talented players developed from the grass roots through the elite divisions to ensure a consistent flow of top players through the appropriate transitions. He revealed this when he was discussing the state of Ghana Football on UTV’s “United Showbiz” program on Saturday.

He said, the Ghana Football Association and the government should begin initiating the fruitful model being used by the Right To Dream Academy which recently has produced a flood of top talents for European clubs and the Black Stars like Mohammed Kudus, Kamaldeen Sulemana and Ernest Nuamah, among others.

As a product of a successful youth development system himself, the former Black Stars midfielder said it was vital that the Ghana Football Association (GFA) focused on talent identification and development as a critical part of its general advancement policy like the five-year development plan by the Ben Koufie-led FA twenty years ago.

According to Agyemang Badu, this implementation ensured Ghana qualified for its first FIFA World Cup in 2006 and ensured sustained progress many years later.

Agyemang-Badu said it was critical that the FA established a talent identification office within the GFA, staffed by former players with expertise in spotting potential to help identify talents for the national coaches.

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He further added that, the Right To Dream system in Ghana had been very successful. Because of this, the government and the FA ought to set up a national academy like the one that was run by former Black Stars players like Derek Boateng, Laryea Kingson, Michael Essien, and Mas-Ud Did Dramani, a technical director of the academy.

“Where is Right to Dream getting its talents? Which people are doing the work for Right to Dream —Laryea, Didi Dramani, Essien and Derek as their head scout. They scout the players here, train them here and abroad and after eight years we go and invite the graduates to play in our national teams,” he lamented.

“Why don’t we set up a talent identification office for the game at the FA, let him [Boateng] work and identify U-15, U-17 talents for the national coaches? It’s an important setup we need and we must employ someone trained in that field.”

Badu went on to say that the national teams’ recent poor performance was caused by the abandonment of a bottom-up development model. This model had produced a slew of stars, including Samuel Inkoom, Andre Ayew, and he himself, who went on to win the FIFA U-20 World Cup for African U-20s in 1999 and made sure their transition to the Black Stars went smoothly.

“Apart from the Black Queens, none of the national teams bring us glory these days. We have to go back to the basics such as the inter-school competition or colts football where the talents are abundant and are best identified”, he said.

“I’m happy with the FA’s U-15 catch-them-young policy, which is a fantastic idea and it may take time before we see the results and we’ll have strong national teams again,” advised the retired star who represented Ghana at the 2014 FIFA World Cup and five Africa Cup of Nations tournaments.

Agyemang-Badu, who played in the Italian Serie A with Udinese before moving to Turkey, advocated that such talents from nationwide scouting must be kept at the GFA’s Technical Centre (Ghanaman Centre for Excellence) at Prampram and groomed over time and made to play against teams from the West Africa sub-region and in their various clubs as they make smooth transitions through the age-group teams just as existed when Ghana dominated the Under-17 and Under-20 competitions which gave rise to a strong Black Stars squad that enjoyed sustained successes until recent years.

credit: United Television