Just over a decade ago, Ghana shocked the world by beating Brazil to win the 2009 Fifa U-20 World Cup. Just last year, Ghana’s U-20 failed to qualify for the 2019 FIFA U-20 world cup that was held in Poland.
The former flamboyant midfield gem is currently into the player scouting business after hanging his boots. He has done Hearts of Oak a great service already in that regard, having secured for the club, midfielder Emmanuel Nettey, who is arguably the club’s best midfielder presently. Esme Mends is asking the Management of the Black Stars where the U-20 squad who won the 2019 world cup aside from Dede Ayew and the current U-20 players who couldn’t qualify for the FIFA U-20 world cup that was held in Poland are.
“Are we passing the young players into the national or promoting the U20 players into the national team? How many of these U-20 players have been promoted to our U-23 or Black Stars team? He asked these questions while being interviewed by Sir Martin of Africa’s renowned sports website Ghanasportspage.com, also stating that he had scouted for new footballers who play for unknown teams in Europe.
He urged that Ghana and the GFA be more focused on our U-17 and U-20 teams and promoting them to the Black Stars. He cited Mali, Cameroon, and Nigeria as countries that have encouraged and sustained the practice of nurturing their young players for senior teams. Mali won CAF U-20 African championship and qualified for the U-20 World cup in Poland with this same strategy. The Malian team that beat Ghana 3-0 in the recent friendly match is the same promoted U-20 squad. Cameroon and Nigeria have won crucial matches by employing the same strategy, maintaining, nurturing, and promoting.
“We can’t get all the players to groom them for the future but we can at least have 9 players maintained and nurtured from U20 to U23 and then the senior national team”.
Esme believes that when and if these structures are laid down, only then can Ghana Black Stars win trophies.
“Stop focusing on the foreign players”, he advised.
“Be bold enough to retire most of the old players from the Black Stars team and promote most of the U20 and U23 players into the team. They’ll play and know themselves very well and can beat every country they meet”.
“Yes, we cannot win trophies because every day we see different players in the team and let me tell you, national teams are different from club teams. So until we keep focusing on our national youth teams and graduating the players into the senior national team, Black Stars can never win a trophy”, he concluded
