Elite football academies will help identify talents at right age - President Simeon-Okraku

President Simeon-Okraku says the GFA elite football academies will help identify talents at the right age for our national teams.

This was in reaction to the decision to invest in GFA owned football academies in the three football zones of Ghana.

The GFA Elite Football Academy system aims to establish academies across the country, where players scouted at the junior high school level will be screened and placed in senior high schools in the three football zones as part of the plan to restore Ghana's status as an African football powerhouse.

“The foremost GFA elite football academy which will give kids who have been carefully selected and who will be train according to our DNA the opportunity to become national heroes’’ President Simeon-0kraku said.

‘’We have invested in our first academy in the upper east, in the next few weeks, the second pilot will be happening in the Ashanti region here, the third will happen in the south, most importantly the end vision of your FA is to establish this GFA owned elite academies in each of the ten football regions in this country”.

“The kids are going to be identified early; they are going to go to school and offered football tuition with well trained instructors by FIFA. Over a three-year period, how many super talents the FA are going to produce across the ten football regions, their impacts on individual clubs, national teams, your guess will be as good as mine. What is good is that the FA is very committed towards this venture”.

“To confirm our determination, the FA has employed one of the most experienced ex footballers, one of the most educated ex footballers and in recent times, the ex-captain and CEO of Medeama SC, Joseph Tetteh Zutah as the General Manager for the FA’s elite academies”.

“Again, to help us identify talents at the right ages, at the right time, the technical directorate has identified five scouts in each of our ten regions. These five scouts have been trained by the technical directorate and they have been scouting players for our U-15 and our U-20 national teams. The first badge of talents that were scouted by this scout trained by our Technical Directorate where the players that represented Ghana in the international friendly tournaments in Serbia. The twinkle twinkle little starlets that were led by Laryea Kingston”.

“So, you can see clearly my colleagues that we have stopped or changed the way we scout for our national teams, now the players are scouted early through the talent identification program, they will be enlisted into the boarding schools, the top ones will find themselves into the national teams plus the same scouts will go into the schools and into the districts to scout for the super talents for our national U-15 and U-17 national teams”.

“Overtime we are going to deploy same scouts to also perform same responsibility for our domestic national teams which is the Black Galaxies. Gradually, we are making progress; this step needs patience and time. During this period, we will have good times and bad times. Glories do not come overnight; it needs patience and the support of everybody’’ he added.

The concept which is open to both boys and girls will be replicated in the Ashanti Region (middle belt) and Greater Accra Region (south coast). Essentially, the GFA will scout for exceptional talents at a young age, provide professional football training, and make them available to all clubs and national teams in Ghana.

The Elite football academy system has taken off at Winkogo, Bolgatanga in the Upper Est region of Ghana.