2021 AFCON Qualifiers: Ghana to rely on home-based players for South Africa match

 Black Stars coach Charles Kwabla Akonnor has named a 32-man squad to begin preparations for next month AFCON double-header against South Africa and Sao Tome and Principe.The squad is made of home-based players which the gaffer explains is as a result of the difficulty in getting foreign-based players for the AFCON double-header due to COVID-19 and travel restrictions.The former Black Stars is likely to have his squad dominated by the local-based players as camping starts on Monday 15 February.”It has become necessary to do this because of the challenges we faced before the Ghana versus Sudan match when players were not able to come because of COVID-19 issues”. coach Akonnor explained the reason for handing call-ups to the local based players.”We made some late call ups but travelling restrictions and quarantine issues made things difficult for us. So, management and the technical team thought it wise to do this by inviting a chunk of home players to move to camp to prepare for the games.”We believe that once the time gets closer, we will look at the foreign players who are doing well and without issues of COVID-19 to join the players. With all this at stake, we (myself and the rest of the technical team) have been able to go around to look into what is going on with our clubs and I must commend our coaches for a good job done”, he added.Coach Akonnor squad for the squad will most likely be dominated by locally-based players for the South Africa game.Ghana and South Africa are both levelled up on nine points in Group C.