He said this while addressing some members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as part of his Building Ghana Tour in the Northern Region.
Mahama noted that the recent poor performances of the Black Stars was down to the fact that there was lack of a local core of players.
According to the former president, he will liaise with the Ghana Football Association (GFA) to ensure that a new national team is built with home-grown players.
“We just came from the Africa Cup of Nations and we performed abysmally, disastrously,” Mahama said.
“We performed abysmally because we’re not growing our football. So we’re going to work with the football association to start catching them young, so that we can train them and give them to local teams to train them and give them experience. If they even want to travel abroad, they can travel.”
He added: “We will build the new Black Stars based on home-grown players. Domestic players who have trained together for a long time and worked as a team. Then we will bring the foreign ones to come and blend with them.
“If you bring only foreign players, they don’t play together, they play in their individual teams and when it’s time for a competition, you bring them together, it won’t work. The core of the Black Stars must be made by domestic players.”
Ghana exited the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) at the group stage after failing to win a single game.