John Mahama: Former Ghana President Discloses Plan to Fix Black Stars After AFCON Debacle

• The Black Stars suffered a first-round AFCON elimination in Cote d'Ivoire
• Former Ghana president John Mahama has reacted to their performance
• The former champions will have to wait for the next AFCON to try again

Former Ghana President, John Dramani Mahama believes it is time to build the Black Stars around home-based players following the national team's poor performance at the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations.

For the second consecutive AFCON, the four-time African champion suffered a group stage exit, leaving fans of the Black Stars disappointed.

The ex-President, who will lead the opposition party, the National Democratic Congress to the 2024 general election, has shared his plan to help revive the Black Stars.

"We just came from the Africa Cup of Nations and we performed abysmally and disastrously," he said, as quoted by Ghana Soccernet.

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"We performed abysmally because we are not growing our football and so we are going to work with the Ghana Football Association to start catching them young so that we can train them and give them to local teams to gain experience before if they want to travel abroad they can travel," he added.

According to Mr Mahama, the right balance between players plying their trade in Ghana and the foreign-based players will bring the best out of the senior national team.

"We will build the new Black Stars based on homegrown players. Domestic players who have trained together for a long time and work as a team and then we will bring the foreign players to come and blend with them," he continued.

"If you bring only foreign players, they don't play together and play in their individual teams, and then when it's time for competition and tell them to come and play, it won't work. The core of the Black Stars must be made of domestic players.

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"We are going to overhaul Ghana football in collaboration with the Football Association."

The Black Stars failed to win a game at the tournament in Cote d'Ivoire, as reported by The Athletic.

Chris Hughton sacked as Ghana coach

Earlier, Sports Brief reported that Chris Hughton has been sacked following Ghana's group-stage elimination from the ongoing 2023 Africa Cup of Nations.

Hughton took over at the Black Stars from Otto Addo after the 2022 FIFA World Cup but saw his team fail to secure a victory in all three of their Group B matches at the 34th edition of the AFCON.

The former Newcastle United and Brighton and Hove Albion trainer's tenure as head coach of the West Africans was marked by criticism, mainly due to the team's poor results.