Black Stars coach, Kwasi Appiah, says Kevin-Prince Boateng, like any other quality Ghanaian player, deserves a chance to play for the team, and he is ready to hand him an invitation to play for the nation until he has good reasons to slam the door on any such player.
Defending his latest invitation to the Schalke 04 midfielder, whose loyalty to the national team had been questioned, Coach Appiah said Boateng was a quality player that every coach would love to have in his team and, thus, there was no reason to use his unavailability for previous call-ups to shut him out of the team.
Last Tuesday, Appiah named Boateng among his 24-man squad for the final World Cup play-off against Egypt in Cairo on November 19, but many Ghanaians had questioned the rationale behind the invitation to a player who on two previous occasions had reported injured after being invited to play in the World Cup qualifiers, after rescinding his controversial decision to retire from international football.
However, Coach Appiah told the Graphic Sports that he did not doubt the genuineness of Boateng's injuries when he was invited for Ghana’s World Cup qualifiers against Zambia and Egypt, as there were medical reports from Schalke to support the player’s claim.
"The medical reports were cross-checked by our medical team and they were satisfied, so I have no reason to doubt the genuiness of that report,” confirmed Appiah.
"It is no secret that Boateng has problems with his joints which keep recurring. It was even a bother during the 2010 World Cup and he has been dealing with it. As to whether it is coincidental that it pops up during national duty call but goes away when it is club duties, no one can tell. But it won't be like that forever.
"I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt and I'll give him a long rope. But, of course, there is a limit to how long the rope can last. When that time comes, nobody can point accusing fingers at me.”
Appiah, who is on the verge of making history as the first local coach to qualify the Stars for the World Cup, also defended his decision to leave out experienced goalkeeper, Richard Kingson, from the squad for the final assignment, saying he was only calling up another player to check him up.
"Unless the unthinkable happens, only one goalkeeper will be used for the match so there is no point in inviting the players you already know. Such training schedules allow us to check out other players and that is what "I've done all through the qualifiers. People have criticised me as being inconsistent, but I think it paid off when I had to get reliable defenders for the game against Egypt when all the regular defenders were injured. How else would I have known and picked the players who performed creditably?” he explained.
The Stars leave for Istanbul on Sunday to begin a week-long training ahead of the November 19 tie in Cairo.
Graphic Sports/Ghana
