Soccer News of Sunday, 24 February 2013

Source: Prince Dornu-Leiku / 90 MINUTES

Golden Boy: Blame players, not Appiah

Former Black Stars playmaker, Abdul Karim Razak has hailed the decision of the Ghana FA to keep Kwesi Appiah as national team manager. 1978 Africa Nations’ Cup winning hero, Abdul Razak consequently nicknamed ‘Golden Boy’ believes there need to be widespread changes in personnel of the Black Stars playing body because lots of them proved at AFCON 2013 that they are not up to the task of putting on the red, gold, green of Ghana.

“We want to win Africa (Cup of Nations), we want to go to World Cup so there have to be changes,” Razak said.

He continued: “Because many of these players we took to South Africa proved that they can’t do the job. Some players were very poor and uncommitted and it’s sometimes hard to blame the coach for that.”

He added on the retention of Coach Appiah: “I don’t believe in the constant change of coaches and I cannot say anything about whether the coach is good or not.

“It’s the authorities who choose and fire. It’s also not nice to sack a coach after just one tournament.

“We have to give him time and see after say the World Cup qualifiers to see if this man is not the right coach for us. Maybe the problem is not the coach but the players.”