Osei Palmer: GFA won’t force Grant to name local side for Rwanda clash

Vice chairperson of the Black Stars Management Committee, Wilfred Osei Palmer has indicated that selection of players into the national team is the sole responsibility of Avram Grant.

There have been calls from the public for a Local based Black Stars to be named for Ghana's final 2017 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Rwanda at home because the team has already qualified to the continental showpiece.

And there are reports that the Ministry of Youth and Sports has bought into the concerns raised by a section of the sports loving fans by indicating that the nation at the moment has financial challenges so it would be prudent to field a local based side against Rwanda.

Responding to this Osei Palmer has indicated that the foreign-based players who helped the nation to get to this far shouldn't be denied the opportunity to finish it.

'Selecting players into the Black Stars is the responsibility of the coach (Avram Grant). We don't want to interfere with his job, so we won't allow anybody to do that. We shouldn't set a bad precedence to make the players feel that whenever they make things easy for the team, local boys would be called to complete the job, so they have to wait until the last stage to qualify, which is a significant risk.

'Moreover, our budgets was sent and approved by cabinet about five months ago, so I don't understand why the Ministry should come back and say there is no money. They have not communicated it to us, but I have just heard it from the media so I can't make a case out of it,' he told Happy FM.