Spain U21 hand Black Stars target Inaki Williams first international call up

Inaki Williams has received his first national team call up by Spain as he was named in their U21 squad just weeks after the Ghana FA revealed they will be pursuing him to play for the Black Stars.

The 20-year-old striker was named in the 20-man Spain U21 squad that will be playing friendlies against Norway and Belarus on March 26 and 30 respectively.

The flying Athletic Bilbao forward has caught worldwide headlines for his impressive displays in La Liga – in particular their famous 1-0 win over giants Real Madrid earlier this month.

Ghana FA President Kwesi Nyantakyi had earlier this month at a press conference confirmed his outfit's eagerness to pursue the nationality switch of Williams to enable him play for Ghana at international level.

The striker is officially a Spaniard born to a Ghanaian father and a Liberian mother – meaning he has the option of playing national team football for all these three countries.

But the GFA wanted to start processes early to secure the fine talent early enough to ward off any interest from their other competitors by issuing notice of their interest at the press conference.

But Spain rather look to have got the head-start by naming the youngster in their national youth team for this month's friendlies.

The GFA however still have a chance of securing Inaki Williams' international future with the Black Stars since he is yet to play 'competitive football' for Spain's senior national team – regardless of whether he plays for the U21's.

A similar thing happened with former Arsenal man Emmanuel Frimpong who played for the Black Stars despite having featured in the youth national teams of England.

If successful, Inaki Williams will join a growing list of recognized emerging football talents to have gone through a nationality switch process to play for Ghana.

Quincy Owusu-Abeyie, Kevin-Prince Boateng, Adam Kwarasey and Emmanuel Frimpong are some of a few that have manged to play for Ghana after undergoing such a process.

Others like Mario Balotellie and Jerome Boateng however didn't avail themselves to such a situation after revealing from the onset they were not interested in playing for Ghana.