Black Stars head coach Chris Hughton believes Gideon Mensah’s injury absence from the team is down to the wing back’s heavy involvement in Auxerre’s relegation battle in the just ended French Ligue 1.
The veteran trainer believes Auxerre managed the knee injury situation to have Mensah fit enough to play in crucial games to help the club avoid the drop.
However, Auxerre completed the 2022-2023 season in 17th place after losing 0-1 to fellow relegation threatened Brest.
In previous seasons, Auxerre’s positioning would have kept them in the league but a new directive to have 18 teams compete in the league instead of 20 moving forward meant four teams instead of three teams were relegated to Ligue 2.
Speaking at the press conference after a training session at the Accra Sports Stadium, Hughton indicated that Mensah’s injury related absence from the Black Stars contingent to play against Madagascar in a 2023 AFCON qualifier on Sunday, June 18 is due to this.
“His club has been managing an injury that he has but this is somebody who has been playing in all of the games and maybe some of that is because his team were obviously in a very difficult position. Gideon wanted to be here that’s a good sign.
So it was our responsibility to assess him, assessed where he is at that moment with the medical information and come to a conclusion that probably at this stage we didn’t want to risk him.”
The Black Stars training session today is to be held behind closed doors.