Former Black Stars coach,Sam Arday,has stressed the need for the senior national team to play against teams from every continent of the world in their build-up to the Germany 2006 World Cup.

That,he said,would psych up the players for the competition and also give them first-hand information about the style of play of all the participating teams.

He,therefore,described the November 16 international friendly between Ghana and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf as a step in the right direction.

Speaking to the Graphic Sports in an interview,Coach Arday stressed that the Stars would have to go to Germany to make a serious impression,saying that could only be possible through good preparation.

“I want to see the Stars go beyond the preliminaries and we will see what happens from there,”he stated.He said Germany 2006 would be the right platform for the team to prove what Camerounian soccer legend,Roger Milla,said about Ghana at the Italia ’90 World Cup.

He suggested that the nucleus of the Stars team should be kept intact,with at most three players being added to beef it up.

“I have one or two players in mind which I want to discuss with the team’s management committee,”he said.
As one of the three coaches who saw the Stars through their qualifying campaign,Coach Arday could not hide his joy for being part of that historic feat.

“For me the fact that the team has qualified for the World Cup is rewarding enough.The only thing is that the recognition should be there that when things were very tough, somebody sacrificed and I happen to be the person”, he pointed out.

“I’m happy we we’ve qualified,if we had faulted many would have pointed to the DR Congo match which, though, has proved to be the most difficult in the entire qualifiers”.

The man who made history by leading the Black Meteors to win Africa’s first ever medal at the Barcelona ’92 Olympics,and also won Ghana her second gold at the Ecuador ’95 U-17 World Cup,attributed the Stars’ success story to unity of purpose.

“When a group of players come together with determination and soccer artistry,they will achieve their aim, and that is what the Stars have done”, he noted.

Coach Arday, aka the “Multi-System Man”,was appointed as a stop-gap trainer to supervise the Stars game against DR Congo which ended goalless in Kumasi when Portuguese Mariano Barreto abandoned the job midstream.