Black Stars Head Coach Carlos Queiroz was officially unveiled last Thursday at a press conference in Accra.
The 73-year-old Portuguese tactician has signed a four-month contract to guide Ghana in the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the United States in June/July, having taken over from Otto Addo. Here are excerpts of the coach’s interaction with the media.
First words…
My first words are to express my gratitude. It is an honour and a privilege for me to be here today. I know that since I arrived, I have started to feel that this is the soul of the black stars.
Yesterday I saw, and I felt the vibration, and I started to realise that the soul of the Black Stars is huge. It is huge.
So that means that our dreams and expectations are also huge. I want to say that after eight national games and a couple of important competitions, this is the biggest challenge of my life. And I am grateful for that.
I am grateful that I can promise again to the group that I will bring 40 years of my knowledge and experience. I am a coach for different generations, and fortunately, without my players, I can’t do much. I have a symbolic record of years in the game in terms of international games.
And I don’t know what I can say. I felt good about it. So, I trust, and I believe that with the support of my staff and the support of the board, the support of my players, the support of the friends and the fans, the special supporters, all together, with creation and with a lot of ambition, I believe, and I trust that we can bring success. In a simple way, I can say I am still ready.
On structure, discipline and control missing in current team…
You know, you mentioned something correct. We are running against the wind. We are running against time. But, as I said, in my experience and my expertise, and the support of the staff and especially the work of the staff, they are the most important people among all of us, especially our players. I’m very confident that we can do it. Of course, this demands a lot of hard work, but in life, that was always my approach. You only have five choices.
One, you can choose the easy way. If you choose the easier way, you cannot succeed in football. Or you can choose a way as we do now, which we did before. Seven days with staff observations. We used many moments in the report to assess where we stood at this moment. We cannot lie to ourselves.
On the responsibility of staff…
Now it’s up to us to implement the programme to prepare our players for this event. So, I’m very confident. Yes, sir, you are right. Because not only do I trust myself and my staff, but watching the group of players that have been there for hours, I am sure, and I am confident, and I believe that we can assemble a good team, a great team to perform on the pitch. Not always. And you also must have a little bit of imagination.
Not always a group of special talent players that can be on the pitch as a great team. This is exactly why I am very confident, because my goal and my target from today on is to make our players understand that if we play together, we should be able to achieve great things as a team one day. Thank you very much.
On being a defensive-oriented or attacking coach…
My personal experience with the national team is not that thin, more than football, chess or basketball. The language that I know for myself, and this is what I’m sure the international team expects from me, is the winning language. I am a winning coach. When you don’t have the ball, you have to fight for it.
You have to sacrifice; you have to sweat on the pitch to recover the ball as fast as possible in order to have more chances to build opportunities and so on. So, after 43 years in the game, if you ask me things about how to win a game, I can probably tell you a couple of things. If I’m defensive or attacking, I leave these things for you because you are the best. With my players, I only know one thing, and it is, if we have the ball, we have to attack. If we don’t have the ball, we have to fight for it. That’s the rule of the game. Because, at the end, at the end, we win together.
On Ghana’s job being the most challenging in his career…
Yes, I said that this was the biggest challenge of my life. There are a lot of incremental things that I could talk about. First, to play in a tournament with a fantastic reputation and a prestigious role is always an honour. And, as you can see, the responsibility is huge. Because all these people expect to win the game and enjoy and share the happiness of everyone. But it
is the biggest challenge in the game because it is the next game. It is the next round of the game. With all the other games that I have played before, all my team, the first squad, we have already won, we have already won, so I am not worried about that. For me, this is the biggest challenge because I must win the next game and because I enjoy the tournament. So that’s why it is the biggest challenge for me.
On readiness to stay beyond the four-month contract…
If I have to stay here for the rest of my life, I will not leave.
On things that need to improve…
What I have to do now is to make an honest and accurate assessment of every step in terms of the qualities of the players that we have. We have to know every step. We know exactly what we need for the next couple of sessions and the next game. And based on the conclusions that were made, the second part is to make the right decisions in the right way.
And there is a difference that exists in the game. We have to be sure that we bring the right players to do the right thing. There is a difference in football, in coaching, between a good decision and the right decision. The only thing that needs to happen now is to study and analyse everything that is related to the past in order to improve the legacy of the biggest club of all time.
They come out, they wear it up, and we are proud of them, and we want to be sure that they make all the fans proud of them.
On target…
What I can tell you is that from day one to the last day, we want to make it. Our goal, our target at this moment, is to be ready to start the first day and get to the concert against Panama. That’s the first step of our journey in Europe.
On the energy players transform since he took over
Honestly, I have been in contact with the players, with the coaches, with the players in the team. I am not really sure about the feelings that they have about the position that we are in. We train every day to win. We train every day to be strong and to win for the country and for the people. And I have strong beliefs. I have a strong belief in my experience. A group of my technical team will operate locally, and there is a group of staff members who will also operate abroad. And here, we want to try to gather all the information and make the final decision.
On creating a winning atmosphere…
It is my belief, and this is what I believe in all the national teams that I have worked with, Portugal, South Africa, Egypt, Qatar. The duty of a national team coach is to have their hands on the present and their eyes on the future. So, I want to say it is the duty of a national team programme, It is not only to manage my way to get the best results in the present, but also to create a heritage, a dynasty, a dynasty of players that after the World Cup in the United States, we know which generation will come in 2028, 2030, 2032.
At this moment, I have to put 99.9% of my attention on the results and success of the World Cup. I wish God would give me the blessing to write the best results for the better in the present. And therefore, if it happens as I expect, I will be very happy and glad to give my contribution to the state and explain how I believe one national team must guarantee its legacy and its progress. I think that this country, like every country you already know in the world, has huge, enormous potntial. This is a country full of footballers.
Ghana is a country of footballers. I believe that by the day Ghana will be able to manage the present and the future in this way, as I said, this country will not only be a country of footballers, but it will also be a country of champions.
On chance for local players…
First of all, nobody owns the national team. That’s a point that must be clear. Nobody owns the national team. But the players dream of representing the country. It is our job to give them a fair and right position. That’s why in this short period of time, I started with the federation, organising local players because I didn’t want to go to the finals of the national team without having the opportunity to see them, to deal with them and analyse them.
So, again, I thought it is to be sure that the ones that represent us are the ones that really deserve to be there. For me, the national team, it is a heart without equals, without God. Inside the heart can only be the players who deserve to be there. And the moment you open the door and you ask for people to come in and help, that’s why they have the people that they deserve to be. So, this is the way that I do it.
Of course, we know that international footballers, a lot of them. And it is also my responsibility to make sure that the players that I select are the people with the right spirit.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh