AFCON 2019: Timing To Strip Off Gyan's Captaincy Bad - Nii Odartey Lamptey

Nii Odartey Lamptey. a former Ghana internationals beleives that the decision by Coach Kwesi Appiah to name a new captain with less than a month to the start of this year's Africa Cup of Nations will be a problem to the team.

Head coach of the Black Stars, Kwesi Appiah on Friday, May 24 named Andre Ayew as the new captain of the team ahead of the tournament with the former skipper of the side Asamoah Gyan elevated to general captain.

But according to the former Aston Villa forward, the focus had to be on the preparation for the tournament and not the captaincy issue.

"A month before a tournament for all these issues of the captaincy is distracting the team. The timing is very poor because people are now focusing on the captaincy issues rather than the preparation towards the tournament", he told Happy FM.

He also insisted that Gyan should have been allowed to captain the team at the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations or be stripped some months ago and not at this crucial time.

"Ideally they should have allowed Asamoah Gyan to take the team to Egypt then after the tournament it can be taken from him or it should have been done six months ago not now.

"I can’t advise Asamoah Gyan to reject the general captaincy role but my fear is that people will attribute anything bad that happens in camp to him and this captaincy issues", he added.

Odartey also indicated that Asamoah Gyan should have maintained his stand by retiring as he indicated in the wake of the issue.

"He should have maintained his retirement but nobody can reject a Presidential request".

"We have a history of issues with captaincy so we should have handled this issue in a way that it won’t affect us just like in the past".