The Technical Director of the Ghana Football Association Bernhard Lippert says his division would give an equal opportunity to every young talented footballer in the country to be selected into the national U-17 team.
He was speaking during the launch of the Elite Talent Identification program on Wednesday, October 5, 2022 at the GFA Secretariat in Accra.
The Elite Talent Identification Project is a program that will be implemented across the ten Regional Football Associations.
‘’Today is a very happy day for me as the Technical Director of the Football Association and the top management of the Association’’ he said.
‘’When I came to Ghana, everyone was talking about the Black Stars but if we have challenges in the Black Stars, nobody is interested in what happens to the foundation of football’’.
‘’And today is the day where we implement things in a different way, from the bottom to the top. I think this will bring out good fruits in the next 3 to 5 years’’.
‘’We have a big foundation of top players and the elite program will work with two age groups, 11 to 14’’.
‘’Age 11-12 years will have a special training program where they train two times a week same for ages 13-14 for over 40 weeks per year’’.
‘’We train with the 12 best players in each District and later we identify from the regional selection team to make up our U-15 team’’.
‘’The positive thing for me is to have a true scouting process for our youth national teams in the future’’.
‘’We will give every child the chance to dream because in the past, we lost and forgot about a lot of players in the hidden areas, from Brong Ahafo to the Upper West, but with time, we will get there’’.
‘’We will cover all the country and roll out this elite program nationwide. We have to make the children of Ghana dream and give everyone the same opportunity to develop’’.
‘’We have created a book for this called, ‘Elite Training Project’ not only for elite training but for all talents including coaches and players in the country’’. ‘’You can break it down to the easiest level because there are enough exercises in the book which we already discussed with Professor Mintah to align it in our Coaching courses’’.
‘’All courses in the country are informed about this book, our football philosophy which will also be presented later’’.
‘’This is a big step and no coach should be without a book in the future”. He added
The Elite Training Project will be used by Scouts, Coaches and Talent Developers in the various Regional Football Associations to hunt for young talented footballers who will form the base of the national youth teams.
