A top European football scout based in Ghana has opined that Ghanaian players, largely, have failed to blaze the trail in the top European leagues because of lack of proper training facilities and good coaches. He said this when he appeared as guest on the Skyy Sports Show on Skyy Power 93.5FM hosted by Nana Kwasi Okofo Caleb today.
Rene Koster, also a coach identified three major factors responsible for the failure of Ghanaian players’ inability to breakthrough the big European leagues. The factors, according to Mr Kosta are lack of properly trained coaches, bad pitches and a less quality and competitive league.
On the coaches, he was if the opinion that most of the coaches who are supposed to train the children the basics of football themselves do not understand the game. As a result, the players at the very young age are not equipped with basic technique and tactics and modern trends of the game as is done for their counterparts in other countries. It was his opinion that for a player to understand the game, it is the coach who has to understand the game first. And in Ghana, he has realised that most of the coaches do not understand the game which has been a problem for the players. “The coaching academy in Ghana is not fantastic, of course you have a couple of good coaches but you have quite a number of coaches who are working on talented players who don’t understand the Game” he posited.
Elaborating on how lack of proper facilities hinder the progress of Ghanaian players, he said most pitches in Ghana are in a very bad condition compared to those in Europe. To him, the bad facilities used to train players here make Ghanaian players find themselves in disadvantageous position when they travel to Europe and are to play on an entirely different pitches.
The leagues, according to him could not retain the best players so they are not competitive enough. It lacks quality and competitiveness. It is not properly organised so there are no clear cut plans to develop talents.
Professing solutions to the problem, Koster suggested the Ghana Football Association bring in experts from outside Africa to develop the coaches and equip them with the right technical know-how and experience in handling the talents in Ghana. For now, he is focusing on the short term plan which is taking the talents to Spain and developing them there.
Rene Kosta is in Takoradi to scout for talents to export to Europe. A mini tournament has been put together to help him comb for talents. The tournament will see Skyy FC, Sekondi Eleven Wise and To Be FC parading talents at the Adiembra School Park on Wednesday, 31st March, 2021 in a round robbing.