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A former Youth and Sports Minister, Kwame Saara Mensah believes local players are the only way to end the trophy drought for the Black Stars.

According to him, the Ghana Football Association (GFA) and the Ministry of Youth and Sports should concentrate on growing the game in the nation by grooming amateur players and elevating them to the national squad.

He stated that the Black Stars national team's effectiveness is being hampered by the practice of simply calling up players from "nowhere" without making appropriate preparations.

“I think we may have to concentrate on the national league. That is football in the country. At the moment, it looks like all our attention is on the professional game and any youth at all at whatever age wants to be a professional and I do not think we can achieve much with that.

“Those days when Ohene Djan was here and he was the Director of Sports under Nkrumah’s regime and you could see that sports, in general, was being handled from the grassroots right through the secondary schools, we had the academicals and from there you have the junior national teams and from there you progress into the national team.

“These days they sit down and there is a tournament going on somewhere and tomorrow they announce a team of 24 to come and nobody even knows them,” he said on JoyNews.

The Black Stars managed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup scheduled to commence in November and hosted by Qatar.

The Black Stars have failed to win the Africa Cup of Nations since 1982.

JNA