Talent hunt for Under-20, 23 teams begin

Mr Isaac Paha, coach of the national Under-20, 23 soccer teams has embarked on a nation-wide exercise to hunt for talented young footballers for the under-20 national soccer teams. The hunt which takes the form of gala competitions would afford young players the opportunity to be selected to form the nucleus of the under 17 and under-20 national teams.

Briefing the Ghana News Agency before the exercise took off at Wa on Thursday, Mr Paha said the programme started at Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region where five players were selected.

“I was marvelled at the level of talents displayed in Bolga and I believe this would be replicated in the whole northern region", he observed. Mr Paha said they had decided to adopt this new approach of looking for players for the national youth soccer teams because the football authorities were convinced that many young talented players are hiding in the rural areas.

"It is our hope that through this exercise, the regions would also become our partners in the national teams building programme", he noted. According to the coach, the exercise would take 22 days and by the end of the period, the players that would be selected countrywide would be good enough to raise the image of Ghana's soccer at the international level. He said the need to carry the programme to the regions has been necessitated by the desire to select the right players and erode the perception of over-aged players constituting our youth teams.

"The perception that players of our youth teams have biological ages and soccer ages should be a thing of the past." He said, he would demand genuine birth certificates of all players who would be selected in addition to rigorous medical checks by medical experts even though, "it is often difficult to determine ages of people through this method". Mr Paha, however, expressed the hope that the players would be honest enough to give their right ages, since anything contrary to that would not help their development in the game.