According to the Black Stars head coach, Milovan Rajevac, the decision by FIFA to extend African players stay with their clubs before joining their national teams for the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) which commences on January 9, 2022 was a great worry for him.
The regulations of FIFA, the world football governing body, states that 14 days to the start of a major tournaments clubs must release players to join their national teams for preparations.
Based on that FIFA regulations, African players were expected to join their national teams on December 27, 2021 as part of preparations for the AFCON tournament.
The European Club Association, however, wrote to FIFA requesting Confederation of African Football to extend the deadline which CAF agreed that players must join their teams 6 days to the start of the AFCON which was January 3, 2022.
But, according to coach Milovan Rajevac the decision by both FIFA and CAF has affected the preparations of Black Stars for the AFCON.
The team had to forfeit two friendly matches because there were not enough players in camp.
In an interview, the Serbian tactician said “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,”.
“We had like 13 players and 4 goalkeepers. 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,” He added.
The Black Stars opened camp on December 28, 2021 with only 8 players out of which 4 were local based players. The team only had a full house on December 5th 2022 when the rest of players joined the Ghana’s camp in Doha Qatar.
Milovan Rajevac’s side were on Wednesday, January 5, 2021 thumped 3-0 by reigning AFCON champions Algeria.
On January 10, 2022, Ghana will open their AFCON campaign against Morocco before taking on Gabon and Comoros.
