Attuquayefio to coach Ghana as well as Hearts of Oak

Ghana have appointed Cecil Jones Attuquayefio as coach of their national soccer team but he will remain at his current club, Hearts of Oak, for two major international events this year.

Attuquayefio, 56, took Hearts to victory in the African Champions League against Esperance of Tunis last month and has signed a four-year contract with the national side.

He will also remain head coach of Hearts of Oak for next month's African Super Cup against Egyptian club Zamalek and the FIFA World Club Championship in Spain in July.

"Attuquayefio has proven by Hearts of Oak's continental success that he is among the he best coaches in Africa, if not the best," Worlanyo Agra, General Secretary of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), told Reuters late on Friday. "We took that into consideration and also the fact that most of the country's major successes were chalked up under indigenous coaches," he added.

The appointment of the former Ghana international, a member of Ghana's triumphant African Nations team in 1965, ends a six-month search for a replacement for Italian Giuseppe Dossena, whose contract ran out last July.

Attuquayefio's first matches will be an African Cup qualifier against Democratic Republic of Congo in Kinshasa on January 14 and a World Cup qualifier in Accra against Liberia on January 28.

Ghana, who have won the African Nations Cup four times, have never qualified for the World Cup finals.