Black Meteors Management Committee Chairman Frederick Acheampong has debunked claims the Ghana Football Association handed a late call up to Cremonese attacker Felix Afena Gyan ahead of the two legged tie against Algeria for the U-23 2023 Afcon qualifiers.
The 20-year-old attacker was part of 8 foreign-based players called up for the fixture, however opted out due to his unreadiness to play for the Black Meteors.
Speaking to Citi Sports in an exclusive interview, Frederick Acheampong shed light on Felix Afena Gyan’s decision to reject the call up from the technical team of Ghana’s U-23, the Black Meteors.
“Afena Gyan’s invitation was not late, I have followed a lot of discussions around the media landscape that the FA handed him a late call up.”
“He was one of the first foreign based players we invited, the President of the Ghana Football Association spoke to me personally and told me that I should get to the technical team so we work around the foreign based players early enough in terms of writing letters to their clubs so they released them on time.”
“Ibrahim Tanko spoke to him personally, long before we engaged the likes of Salim Adams, Ernest Nuamah and the likes.”
“Afena Gyan’s manager relayed the information to Ibrahim Tanko that the player was not ready to play for the team”
Ghana has qualified to the 2023 CAF U23 AFCON which will be staged in Morocco from June 24- July 8, 2023 in Morocco.
The Black Meteors qualified with a 2-1 aggregate win over Algeria courtesy a double from Issahaku Abdul Fatawu in both legs.
The result gives Ghana another opportunity to compete for a slot to play at the 2024 Summer Olympics which will staged in Paris.
Ghana missed an Olympic Games ticket narrowly in 2019 after losing on penalties to Ivory Coast in the semi-finals of the last U23 AFCON held in Egypt.