In the last few weeks there has been a lot of talk about how local players are treated when it comes to the Black Stars as compared to their foreign based counterparts.

Coach Otto Addo initially called up two local players dropped them even before a match was played before handing a late call up to Dennis Korsah and recalling the two players  he let  go.

Many are of the opinion that local based players are not rated by most technical handlers of the national team and just invite them to fill some sort of local content quota.

Most often local players are used as training horses and are never given the slightest of chance to prove their worth even in friendly  matches.

They often do not even make the  match day squad and most often watch from the stands as any ordinary spectator with the only solace being the dollars on offer at the Black Stars.

But Black Stars striker Richmond Boakye Yiadom has proffered some advise for local based  players telling them not to be happy with just a call up and must prove their worth to the coaches.

He also added  that local players should not be overawed or intimidated by their foreign colleagues but must rather compete for places with them.

“The local players have great talent. I was also a local player before I moved outside [Europe]. [If you are called up a local player] you have to have a ‘why?’. You need to ask, ‘why am I being called? Why am I part of the team now?’ So if you have a ‘why’ it makes you one of the best, if you don’t, you feel like they called me and I’m lucky. You come back and you are like, they called me to the Black Stars and you are just saying it,” Boakye-Yiadom, who played in the 2021 AFCON in Cameroon told Joy Sports.

“If you have the why and you go there [to the Black Stars camp], you greet the senior players, it’s okay but on the pitch, you make them aware you are not here to make friends, you are not there as a local player but you are here as a Black Stars player. You put the local player behind you because when you wear the jersey you are not a local player. Even though you play in the local league, if you wear the jersey you are a Black Stars player.”

However, the former Juventus forward added that when local players are called into the national team they must go with the mentality of doing better than the foreign-based players.

“If I am a local player and I come to the national team, I am coming to take what you’ve been enjoying in Europe. There has to be a competition. If the competition does not exceed the European player, you have a problem because the European player is coming with something that he is ahead of you in terms of equipment, exercise, sprinting level, and experience level, where the fans are full in the stadium with the confidence level,” he continued.

“When you go there, what do you show the coach that I am a local player but when you give me the opportunity I will swallow three or four players here. There has to be this mentality that why are you playing and why are you in the national team. You are there because they picked you to be one of the best. You need to increase the level of your running and everything.

“As a coach, if I see a local player and a foreign-based player, you [as the local player] would need to prove yourself to me you are two times that of him for me to put you there [in the team].”