32 Apply as GFA closes applications

The Ghana Football Association at 1700GMT on Friday closed applications for the position of a head coach for the senior national team, the Black Stars with thirty-two (32) submitting their credentials, footy-Ghana.com can reveal.

The Ghana FA invited applications for the position with a one-week timeline after it announced it had mutually agreed to part ways with Coach Kwesi Appiah last week but of all who applied as at Friday, no indigenous trainer submitted his CV for consideration.

“We would have wanted a local coach to come into the fray; it’s important,” Ghana FA spokesperson Ibrahim Sannie Daara said on Joy FM’s News Night confirming that no local applied for the job.

“But let me take this opportunity to encourage our locals that they should take keen interest in developing themselves career-wise. The Ghana Football Association has year-on-year consistently paid for coaches to go to Germany to stay with German teams for one year to ensure that they have their coaching courses,” he added.

The Ghana FA spokesperson also says they would begin pruning down the list of 32 from next week Tuesday to a considerable number for interview and hope to conclude the search by the end of that week.

“We would start working on them [applications] from Tuesday. We want to finish the process by next week Friday and then announce the coach as quickly as possible. We want a coach who can hit the ground running; we want to treat everybody fairly and equally in the process to ensure that the best coach is taken,” Sannie said.

Rui Almeda, Jose Alberto Barosso (Portugal), Ricardo Gareca, De Felipe Omar, Trotta Roberto (Argentina), Boby Davidson (England), Michel Pont (France), Milovan Rajevac, Zarvisa Milosaljevic (Serbia), Leonid Kuchuk (Belaarus), Carlos Roberto Paulette (Peru), Tom Strand (Sweden), Peter Obermeyer (Germany) are some of the names of coaches that have dominated local media as being among the 32 who were able to submit their credentials to the Ghana FA.