Qatar or Turkey: Appiah to name Ghana's AFCON 2019 camping base

Black Stars coach Kwesi Appiah is expected to communicate the team’s camping base for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations when he returns to the country on Saturday, March 9.

The Ghana national team boss, together with his first assistant Ibrahim Tanko, have been on a dual mission of scouting for a suitable pre-tournament camping place for the upcoming tournament in Egypt and player visitations across Europe.

Two destinations – Qatar and Turkey – both a little over two and three-hour flight distances respectively from Cairo, were earmarked for Kwesi Appiah to scout and choose in consultation with the playing body before communicating the choice to the Normalisation Committee in an official report.

“Kwesi Appiah returns on the 9th (of March) then we know what the choice is. This time we don’t want the old way of doing things where the GFA will send it members as advanced party,” the spokesperson for Normalisation Committee, Dan Kweku Yeboah, told Footy-Ghana.com.

In recent years, Ghana has used the United Arab Emirates (specifically Dubai) twice as pre-tournament base for some Nations Cup campaigns – first the 2013 Afcon in South Africa and the recent one, Gabon 2017, during the Avram Grant era.

Meanwhile, both Appiah and Tanko also paid visits to a number of Black Stars players in Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and now Turkey (where the former is situated at the time of this report) over the past two weeks.