Ghana’s senior National team Black Stars head coach James Kwasi Appiah has rejected assertions that he finds it difficult to manage the senior players in his team.
The ex- Ghana international who led Ghana to the 2014 FIFA World Cup tourney and lost 2-1 to Portugal said coaching the Black Stars is never a difficult task for him to have difficulties in managing the senior ones in the team.
According to the 56-year-old, even though people perceive him to be strong-armed regarding management of the senior players, they’re not issues that pin him down because they don’t understand his tactics.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Ghanaweb’s Sport editor, Daniel Oduro on “Sports Check”, the former Black Stars skipper noted, “you see these are some of the things that if you’ve played before, they wouldn’t be issues that will pin me down, if it’s difficult to handle the players then I don’t think I’m qualified to be a head coach”.
“The important thing is that sometimes the coach has to take a decision that is different from what they expect, and they think the coach is taking that decision because he wants to take some particular player out but I know what I am doing”, he explained.
Coach Kwesi Appiah, who played at the left-back position for the Black Stars and Kumasi Asante Kotoko, said no one is perfect and that is the more reason why the senior players need to be given chances to prove themselves or watch them mess up and realise their faults when the young players compete and take their positions.
“At the end of the day, once these big players notice there are something’s that are not right and starts making them backslide and there is a young competitor and they might take their positions from them, they then “kill” themselves and stop disobeying, irrespective of your status”, said Kwesi Appiah.
It shall be recalled that Kwasi Appiah led Ghana to the 2014 World Cup where the Black Stars were booted out of the tournament in the group stages for the first time in history.
Ghana’s abysmal performance at the tourney was partly blamed on Kevin Prince Boateng, Sulley Muntari, and Michael Essien as the masterminds of problems in Ghana’s World Cup. Many opined that the coach could not manage the ego of certain players who went to the extent dictating to the coach to drop goalkeeper Adams Kwarasey.
