Ghana coach Milovan Rajevac has blamed FIFA for disorganized preparation for the African cup of nations for allowing players to join camp on 3rd January.
This comes after the European Club Association and World Leagues Forum requested from FIFA that players should be given extra days before they join their respective camps after their plans to stop the African players from participating in the tournament to no avail.
FIFA granted the request and informed the various countries to expect the players to their camping no later than January 3, 2022.
Due to that, the Black Stars of Ghana pre-afcon friendly match on Tuesday, December 28, 2021, in Qatar has been cancelled due to insufficient players before loosing 3-0 to African champions, Algeria, yesterday January 5, 2022, in Doha, Qatar.
According to the Black Stars manager, this has affected the team preparation.
“Unfortunately, this decision from FIFA to allow players to stay in their clubs in this period affected our plans for the preparation, since most of the time we didn’t have many players to work with. Many training sessions we had 7 or 8 players and 3 goalkeepers, so it’s very difficult to do some tactical work to prepare the team the way we planned in the beginning,” he told GFA’s media.
“Even today, we had like 13 players and 4 goalkeepers. Tonight few of them will arrive, so definitely it affected, but it affected the other teams as well. So this was not a usual preparation for a big competition because usual preparation you have two weeks to work with the full team. This was totally different. Let’s hope that everything will be okay at the tournament. We’re gathering, we have a good atmosphere, so let’s hope everything will be okay,” Milovan Rajevac added.
The 2021 African cup of nations will be held in Cameroon, as the host nation will be opening the game against Burkina Faso on January 9, 2022, at 4pm.
Ghana will play their first AFCON match against Morocco on Monday, January 10, at 4pm before playing Gabon and Comoros respectively in the group stage.
Source: Kingaziz.com