The Ghana Football Association (GFA) has clarified why Black Stars head coach Otto Addo decided to call up only one replacement despite losing two forwards to injury ahead of the friendlies against Austria and Germany.
Iñaki Williams and Brandon Thomas-Asante were both ruled out after sustaining injuries over the weekend, leaving Ghana with a gap in attack. Instead of bringing in two replacements, Addo opted to add only Ransford-Yeboah Königsdörffer to the squad.
GFA Communications Director Henry Asante Twum explained the reasoning behind the decision.
"What we do normally is that players are always on standby. So immediately when we decided not to involve them in this camping, we got in touch with the club of Ransford-Yeboah Königsdörffer," he told Citi Sports.
"We spoke to Hamburg, and they assured us that they would speak to the player, so we ended up inviting him because he was on the standby list. Straight away we sent him a ticket, and he arrived late last night."
Königsdörffer joined the squad in Vienna and trained with the team on Tuesday, looking lively in his first session.
Asante Twum explained that the proximity to Friday's match against Austria influenced the decision not to bring in a second player.
"The coach decided not to bring in a second player because of the closeness to the first match against Austria on Friday. We have only today, tomorrow to train. Thursday's training is not extensive—it's not a training of higher intensity. So they didn't want to bring in a second player."
With only two full training sessions before facing Austria, Addo opted to work with the available options rather than introduce another new face. Ghana will face Austria in Vienna on March 27 before taking on Germany in Stuttgart three days later.
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