Current Ghana squad differs significantly from 2022 World Cup team – Otto Addo
Black Stars head coach, Otto Addo, has stated that comparing his current team to the one he led at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar is challenging.
Addo, who previously coached at Borussia Dortmund, noted that while some players from the previous squad remain, approximately half of the current team is new.
In a FIFA interview, Addo was asked to compare his current team to the Qatar squad, and he replied,
It’s very difficult to compare the two squads. Most of the players went to the World Cup already, but maybe half the team didn’t. So it’s a different squad. I think we had the youngest squad at the World Cup, but now it’s even younger, and we are trying to build up to the next World Cup, so it was very hard to make these kinds of decisions, but it would have been even harder next year trying to put new players in place.
We’ve done it right from the start so we can build up over the two-year period. We have to qualify first and that is going to be difficult, but I want to take the risk to give them this experience of qualifying for the World Cup. But we have to do our own work first and there’s going to be tough matches, and we’ll also have to qualify for the AFCON. We were behind, but now we’re in a better position, he added.
In his first two competitive matches in March, Otto Addo’s Black Stars secured victories over the Central African Republic and Mali, moving them level on points with Comoros.
However, Addo acknowledges that the team still has significant room for improvement.
I think there’s much to improve, we have a lot of young guys that need to get experience. It’s not comparable to the squad we had in 2014 for example, when we had players like Michael Essien, Asamoah Gyan, Sulley Muntari, Kwadwo Asamoah, they were regulars at Champions League level for big clubs like Juventus, Inter Milan, AC Milan and Real Madrid.
“This squad can get there, but they’re not there yet and I’m trying to help them to get there. They have time because they’re still young, so I’m hoping they will develop to get to that stage and once we get there, we’ll be on a different level.