"African football dying" - Polo

One of Ghana's best-ever players talks to World Football's Alan Green about his country's failure to qualify for the Cup of Nations...

Mohammed Polo won the Cup of Nations with Ghana in 1978 and now runs his own football academy in the country.

He told me he was concerned by so many European clubs looking to Africa as the source of untapped, and relatively cheap, new talent.

"African football is dying because of this exodus of talent, most of whom leave very young" he told me.

"Because they are satisfied with anything they can get, they go to Europe for not much money.

"European clubs should not be so selfish, they should help us as well. They should come and invest money so we can develop. If they take our players at a very tender age they cant cope.

"We need the football authorities to put in place some measures to make the young players know they are still immature" he said.

"The football association in our country should say that before you can play in Europe you have to have played ten international matches, just like the way they do in Europe.

"It was a huge disappointment that Ghana didn't qualify for the Cup of Nations" he went on.

"Every Ghanaian is concerned. Even Rwanda, with all their problems, still beat us. We are the Brazil of Africa, but we are suffering. We need to take control of the situation ourselves.

"We have to work very hard and start from the beginning because most of our footballers are in Europe, which isn't helping football here.

"We are now seing the importance of good infrastructure. We have the quality and talent, but if we cannot learn through what is happening to our footballers we wont get anywhere".