In 2002, the former Ghanaian international player Laryea Kingston was accepted into the team. The player was given the role of a winger and was highly renowned for his abilities and dribbling prowess, which won the hearts of Ghanaians.
He had 40 appearances for the national team and contributed six goals.
The combative nature of Laryea Kingston has occasionally caused him problems, especially when he is representing his country with the Black Stars.
However, the player secured a red card during Ghana’s 1-0 win over Senegal in the 2006 African Cup of Nations, which subsequently axed him from the team for the 2010 World Cup.
Laryea Kingston did not make the final 23 man-squad that travelled to South Africa for the 2010 World Cup after helping Ghana qualify for the tournament in 2010.
The player has expressed his disappointment for not making the final squad in an interview with Muftawu Nabila Abdulai on Prime Take.
He narrated “I was depressed. It took me time to get over it because I felt l lost at the last moment [to play at the World Cup] because the next World Cup was going to be in 2014, and in 2014, I would not be active then. The coach could not give me any tangible reason but the only thing he said to me was…I asked what was the criteria he used in naming the squad because I thought he had to use the players who were playing regularly for their clubs, and I was a key player in Hearts and I was a key player in the qualifiers”.
Laryea Kingston went on to allege that the coach left him out of the squad because he had earlier refused to sign for the coach’s [Milovan Rajevac] agent.
“Yes! to tell FA officials to remove any of the players and put me in shows that he had something against me because he asked me to sign for his agent and I turned it down.”
“Most of the players especially the younger ones were taken to the World Cup. Check their background, they signed with Milo’s agent. A lot of the players, Inkoom, Jonathan Mensah, Dominic Adiyiah, and all those boys were managed by Milo’s agent” – Laryea Kingston disclosed.
The player again revealed “My contract [with Hearts] was running out; I had six months left and they were offering me a contract [extension] but with a pay cut because their budget had dropped. So, my hope was that if I go to the World Cup, one game could raise my value, so I was waiting to go to the World Cup and get a better offer. I was dropped, came back and that contract was no longer on the table”.
After missing two World Cups as a player, Laryea Kingston believes he can make it to the World Cup as a coach with the national team in the future.
Source: Mybrytnewsroom.com/Phillip Addo-Danso
