Kwasi Appiah set for Stars return

The Search Committee last Friday interviewed three applicants — Kwasi Appiah, Frenchman Willy Sagnol and Belgian Hugo Broos currently with Cameroun — shortlisted from the hundreds of applicants last month, and after the interview, Appiah was settled on.

The GFA has up until now, remained tight-lipped over the process of getting a new coach for Ghana’s senior male football team, but a highly placed source  confirmed the search committee’s decision to the Daily Graphic and said a formal announcement of Appiah’s reappointment would be made today after an emergency ExCo meeting and final clearance with the Minister of Youth and Sports.

Appiah’s return to the job he handled from 2012 to 2014, comes as no surprise given the insistence of government that its preference was a local coach, a stance that was strongly supported by former President J. A. Kufuor, who was instrumental in the coach’s first appointment.

The source also told the Daily Graphic that Appiah would be given the free hand to choose his assistants and it is likely he would retain Maxwell Konadu, bring on board Tanko Ibrahim as an additional backroom staff, with former Stars’ goalkeeper, Richard Kingson, also coming on board as the new goalkeepers’ trainer.

Former Black Stars captain, Stephen Appiah, who led the Stars to their first World Cup in Germany in 2006 and also to South Africa 2010, looks set to be named the Team Manager of the team he once captained.

The official announcement by the FA will conclude the job of the  search committee which was tasked to fill the vacant Stars coaching job, following the decision by the FA and Israeli, Avram Grant, not to  renew the contract when it expired last February.

Grant, who incidentally, succeeded Appiah late in 2014, failed to lead the Stars to the set target of an Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) title in 2017, having led them to the final which they lost to Cote d’Ivoire at the 2015 tournament in Equatorial Guinea.