Head Coach
of the Black Stars Dr. James Akwasi Appiah has revealed the secret behind his
success as the first indigenous coach to qualify Ghana to the World Cup.
The soft
spoken coach received massive applauds from the Ghanaian public after guiding the
stars to its third successive World Cup in November last year.
Although
many Ghanaian football freaks were in doubt of the 53 year old credibility,
the Ghana tactician put the whole nation into shock following an impressive run
in the qualifiers toping group D with a whopping 15 points in six games at the
expense of 2012 African Champions Zambia as well as Sudan and Lesotho. Going on
to thrash African’s most successful team Egypt 7-2 at the play off’s stages.
Kwasi Appiah
has however revealed the covert behind his massive success as the head coach of
the senior national team.
“If you look
at it critically when I took up the team, most of the senior players had made
up their minds not to play for the national team again. It was difficult so I decided
to call in some new players to the team”, Appiah told Accra based Montie FM.
“And the
good thing is that you also psych them up whenever you invite them for them to
have the confident that they can also do it. Thankfully, all those I invited
also proved they were very good. And because of that I even took about nine or
ten players to the Cup of nations who had never been to such a competition
before. And after that competition most of them raised their confident level
very high and due to that we even have part of them forming the team that will
be going to the World Cup”, he added.
“This is
totally different when you compare it to the previous years where you have only
some crop of players being invited. But watch and you could see that the young
guys who were also invited into the team proved that they could also play just
like the big lads in the team. And I think that confident helped us to achieve
the needed results”.
Kwasi Appiah
has begun a non-residential camping with his 26 man squad preparing for the
World Cup which kicks starts on the 12th of June this year.
By Frank
Darkwah
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