Ghana’s senior female team, the Black Queens, will head to camp on August 2 ahead of the 2018 Africa Women’s Championships in Ghana.
The team will camp at the Ghanaman Soccer Centre of Excellence in Prampram and 33 players have been invited to the camp.
This was contained in a statement from the CAF/FIFA Liaison team set up to run Ghana football in place of the Ghana FA which is under a court injunction as part of the fallout from the Anas Aremeyaw Anas exposé on corruption in Ghana football.
The statement was signed by Francis Oti Akenteng, who is a member of the committee together with Dr. Kofi Amoah.
The 33 players who have been invited include goalkeeper Patricia Mantey of Immigration Ladies, Rita Okyere of Prisons Ladies and Jane Ayieyam of Police Ladies.
6 foreign-based players have also been called up. They include Portia Boakye of Djugardens of Sweden, Elizabeth Addo of Reign Fc in the United States, Faustina Ampah of FC Minsk of Belarus and Priscilla Okyere of ZKF Spartak Subotica of Serbia.
So Ghana will host the Africa Women’s Championships after all?
The letter from the Liaison team indicating the call to camp strongly suggests that the country is willing and very determined to host the rest of the continent between November 17 and December 1, 2018.
Renovation works are ongoing at the Accra Sports Stadium but there are concerns that the venue may not be ready for the tournament. These concerns came up after CAF’s Inspection Team visited the stadium and said that works were behind schedule.
In June, the Sports Minister, Isaac Asiamah, said that other venues in places like Kumasi, Cape Coast, and Tamale were available for use if Accra, in particular, was not ready.
There are indications that CAF has placed South Africa on alert should Ghana fail to meet the required standards in terms of hosting a tournament.
So what’s next?
The team will hold its camping session in the beginning and it is expected that they will play different friendly matches to help them stay sharp ahead of the tournament since the team is not taking participating in qualifiers.
So far, Nigeria, Algeria, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, South Africa and Zambia have booked tickets to play in the tournament.
Source: CNR