Caretaker Coach Emmanuel Kwesi Afranie said he is better qualified to be named as a permanent helmsman of the senior national team, the Blacks Stars.

Afranie is one of the four coaches short-listed by the Ghana Football Association (GFA) for the top job alongside fellow Ghanaian Abdul Razak as well as Manuel Goncalves Gomes of Portugal and German Burkard Ziese of Germany. The GFA would conduct the final interview on February 1, to choose the man who is likely to be tasked to qualify the nation for her first World Cup and the African Cup of Nations.

Afranie who was speaking on a local FM station yesterday monitored by GNA Sports said among the four nominated, he is the only one who has made appearance at the World Cup, though at the junior level.

The caretaker coach guided the national under-20 team, the Black Satellites, to win silver at Argentina in 2001 and was in charge when the under-17 team won silver in Egypt. Prior to that, Afranie was a silver medallist with the national women soccer team, the Black Queens at the maiden African Women Nations Cup in Nigeria, which also qualified the team for its first ever World Cup in the United States of America.

Asked whether soccer at the junior lever was not different from that at the senior level, Afranie said football at the junior level was more difficult because that was where talents were unearthed and natured.

He said he was proud that most of his under-20 players now form the nucleus of the present Black Stars.

The coach is credited for bringing to the limelight players who were hitherto unknown such as John Pentsil and Sule Muntari.