The Technical Director of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Bernhard Lippert, has defended the constant changes made to the Black Stars squads for their matches in the just-ended AFCON qualifying campaign.
Speaking exclusively to Citi Sports following the Ghana FA’s unveiling of Woodin as its official textile partner, Bernhard Lippert said that while the changes might have been a tad excessive, they were necessary.
He insisted that although the squad shakeups made it difficult for the team to get a consistent rhythm going, it enabled the technical team to get a good look at the players available to them in order to properly assess them.
“[My time with the Black Stars] is honestly too short to judge everything now after just five months. We are still in the process of selection. We have a lot of players, I think more than 50, and it’s time to finish the selection process and concentrate on a squad of 25 to 30 players and really prepare them tactically and in group tactics to make the team really strong,” he said.
“We played almost every much with a different squad and this, in my opinion, was maybe a little bit too change because we changed too often. But at the end of the day it was also necessary to find out the best players. We have a new coaching staff so we also will love to get used to them and find a final squad.”
Head coach, C.K Akonnor, has played 38 different players in the two friendlies and four AFCON qualifiers he has taken charge of, while calling up a whole host of others.
A number of analysts have expressed their frustration with this, stating that with the AFCON just a few months away and limited from now till then for the players to feature together, a stable squad should have been settled on by now.