Assistant coach of Black Meteors, Michael Osei has defended their decision to drop local-based players for foreign ones in matches.
According to the former Asante Kotoko coach, the local players of Ghana's U-23 are not fit for high profile games.
“The teams we are going to face (U-23 AFCON) are active and have prepared for more than five (5) months, so we can’t gamble and use our local-based players for such international tournament, no way," he told Atinka FM
The Star Madrid trainer maintains that the technical team did not bow to the public pressure to feature the locally-based players during their qualifiers to the U-23 tournament and their decision paid off.
"In any case, we didn’t use the local-based players in any of our past matches, Togo, Gabon, Algeria we didn’t use them, the foreign-based players played all these matches because they are active, I don’t see the qualms about this."
"Look is not easy as people see it, if you’ve been a footballer before, you will understand we can’t use the local-based players for such international tournament.†he ended.
The Black Meteors have been drawn in what can be termed the ‘group of death’ with hosts Egypt, Mali and Cameroon for the 2019 U-23 AFCON tournament.
The Black Meteors will be competing in Group A of the 8-team competition scheduled to be staged in Egypt from November 8-22.
The top three finishers at the final tournament will qualify to represent Africa at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Relatedly 18 locally-based Black Meteors players have been invited for camping at the Mplaza Hotel in Accra.