Black Stars head coach Carlos Queiroz has explained his decision to leave Mohammed Kudus out of Ghana’s squad for the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifiers.
Queiroz said the decision was taken after assessing Kudus’ progress and physical condition, with the technical team opting to protect the midfielder’s development.
According to the Portuguese coach, he initially had a positive assessment of Kudus after observing his performance for about 70 minutes.
I was able to scout and make the right observations but later on other information about the stage of the player after he played about 70 minutes, unfortunately he was not progressing in the direction we expect,” Queiroz said.
He added that discussions with Kudus eventually led to the decision to leave him out of the squad.
So in our final conversation with Kudus we realized the best decision is to protect his progress,” he explained.
Queiroz further noted that national team coaches have to make decisions based on their own observations, while recognising that they cannot control decisions made by club coaches.
On the course of our decisions we have the club games and we national team coaches, we can’t control the decisions of coaches [in clubs],” he said.
The Black Stars coach explained that his decision was also influenced by the need to carefully manage Kudus’ workload and development as the national team prepares for its upcoming assignments.
In the course of our observations and conversations, it looked like Kudus was moving in the right direction and I had to make the decisions with the matches,” Queiroz added.