Ghana’s Sports and Recreation Minister Kofi Adams has called for a fundamental overhaul of the country’s football development system, saying it should replace periodic player selection with a structured pathway that tracks talent from the grassroots to the senior national teams.

Speaking at the Ghana Football Association’s 32nd Ordinary Congress in Prampram on Thursday, Adams argued that Ghana’s ability to produce elite footballers should be measured by how effectively it identifies promising youngsters early and monitors their progress through every stage of the game.

“If I ask for the best 30 players in Ghana at U-13 today, can we identify them? Can we tell who will progress to U-15, to U-17, Division One, the Premier League, and eventually our national teams?” he asked delegates.

“Can we tell who will drop out and why? We need to be able to have this.”

The Buem MP said Ghana’s football system cannot claim to have a genuine development pathway if it cannot answer those questions with evidence.

“If we cannot answer these questions scientifically, then we do not yet have a development pathway. We have a selection exercise,” he said.

Adams argued that selecting players for age-group teams ahead of tournaments is only one aspect of development. Instead, he said, Ghana needs a system that continuously tracks players’ progress, evaluates their growth and provides the right environment for them to develop over several years.

“We don’t want to have a selection exercise. We want to have a development pathway,” he said.

The minister’s proposed approach would require closer coordination between grassroots football, academies, clubs, youth national teams and the senior national sides, allowing promising players to be monitored consistently rather than being identified only when national teams are preparing for competitions.

He suggested such a system would also help explain why some players who excel at youth level fail to make the transition into professional football, while others progress through Division One, the Ghana Premier League and eventually the Black Stars.

Adams revealed that a document outlining the proposed development framework has already been prepared and urged football stakeholders to prioritise its implementation.

“That is why the document I read, what has been put together, let’s make sure we work as seriously to implement it,” he said.

He believes implementing the framework would give Ghana the foundation to build a long-term player development system instead of relying on short-term selection exercises.

“Once we do that, we’ll be able to complete this and have a development pathway, not a selection exercise.”