Years back, local-based players struggled to secure places in the senior national team, the Black Stars. But Harrison Afful was one of the three local players who made it this time round.
Harrison Afful might have failed to secure places in any of Ghana’s junior national teams but the Asante Kotoko star managed a place in Claude Le Roy’s team roster for the 2008 African Nations Cup.
The defender, in his first season at Asante Kotoko after signing from relegated Fetteh Feyenoord was named in the 23-man list by the Ghana bench for the Nations Cup even though he only played a cameo role in the third-place playoff against Ivory Coast.
However, the 21 year-old defender says he never expected to make it into the Black Stars team for the tournament.
“Honestly speaking, though I knew Coach Le Roy watched some of our league matches, I never had anything in mind as to be called up into the team. My reason for saying this is premised on the fact that I have had some unsuccessful attempts at securing a place in the junior national teams and so I least expected a Stars’ call up,” Harrison Afful told Asante Kotoko’s official newspaper in a post Nations Cup interview.
Harrison Afful was not part of the initial 40-man roster drawn up by Claude Le Roy but he found himself on board an Emirates flight to the United Arab Emirates a day after a chunk of the team had departed Accra, the Ghanaian capital for a pre-tournament training tour.
“On my feeling at the news of the call up, it was first a surprise to me because my name was not in the earlier list of forty players as announced. Besides, it came at a time when I was so down after being shown the red card in our league match against King Faisal.”
Though a surprise, the defender had to deal with some criticism on radio that he had provoked the red card to pave way for him to join the Black Stars.
“I became the more worried when I heard over the airwaves the way some people had started reading meanings into my red card. As a matter of fact, I was the more saddened when some said I intentionally attracted the card to get the way to join the Stars’ camp,” Harrison Afful recounted.
After joining the rest of the team on January 4 for his first training session, it was all hard work as Claude Le Roy had to whittle down his 27 playing squad to 23 for the tournament before the January 10 deadline for the naming of the final squad.
Harrison made it into Claude Le Roy’s final team and says he was thrilled to beat off competition.
“I was rather thrilled to be part of the lucky twenty-three players who were selected from amongst thousands of Ghanaian players both home and abroad. I therefore saw my inclusion as an opportunity for me to understudy their exploits and make it big as they have achieved.”
Though restricted to the bench, Harrison looks back at the African Nations Cup with glee and says the spirit in the Ghana camp was great.
“One other thing was that, the players made the environment so conducive that a stranger to our camp would hardly see difference between we the locals and them (foreign-based players). We did everything as a team with an agenda to boldly defend the flag of Ghana.”
The African Nations Cup was the defender’s first national assignment after unsuccessful attempts to catch the eyes of scouts for the various junior national teams. But Harrison says, that wasn’t as a result of poor performance.
“I however will like to place on record that my unsuccessful attempts at the junior national teams was not as a result of poor performance. I thank God that I have been proved right by the Stars’ call up.
The tournament certainly shot some players to stardom. Though not enjoying much playing time with the Black Stars, for Harrison Afful, life has just started as he considers himself a star and remains grateful to all the technical hands he has worked with so far.
“Yes I am a star in all humility because any person who made the twenty-three man squad is a star in his own right. I am grateful to all coaches whom I have worked with in my career. What I have achieved today is a culmination of all the good works they did on me,” before he signed off.
