Afranie calls for seriousness

Former Ghana coach Emmanuel Kwesi Afranie has called on the Black Stars to attach more seriousness to friendly matches.

The senior national set-up, under Avram Grant, has struggled for good results in exhibition games, having been held to separate draws by Mali and Canada in five friendly games under the Israeli.

The Black Stars also succumbed to a 2-1 defeat to Senegal in March before picking narrow 1-0 and 3-2 wins over Togo and Congo in August and September respectively.

Ghana currently occupy the 30th position on the Fifa Rankings for November.

“I am not surprised that our ranking has come down,” Afranie told Starr FM.

“Our lack of ambition becomes evident when Canada holds us to 1-1 stalemate, and they even toyed with us in the first half.

“Let us be more serious with our friendly matches. If we are not interested in friendly matches and we will just play for the fun of it, then we should just forget it.

“We should give playing time to the young ones because when you are building a team, you look at the next target – the World Cup.”

Afranie led Ghana to clinch silver at the 2001 Fifa Under-20 World Cup in Argentina, and is highly rated for developing players such Michael Essien, Derek Boateng, Sulley Muntari, John Mensah and John Paintsil who formed the nexus of that team.