The Black Meteors bagged their first win of the ongoing AFCON U23 tournament with a hard-fought victory over Congo counter at the Prince Abdellah Stadium in Morocco.
A game that looked like a foregone conclusion for the Black Meteors on paper turned out to be a rather cagy one from start to finish.
In this piece, I pencil down a few pointers from what I observed from the game against Congo.
The team had a familiar setup with notable players such as Daniel Afriyie Barnieh, Sylvester Simba, Fatawu Issahaku, Danlad Ibrahim, and Dominic Nsobilla forming the fulcrum of the squad for the qualification duels though the late exclusion of Kamaldeen Sulemana and Ransford Yeboah might have hurt the thing in varied ways the additions of Danish-based Ernest Nuamah and CFR Cluj based Emmanuel Yeboah reaped immense benefits for the team as expected.
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Once Coach Tanko put out his starting berth to help interpret his vision on the field, it was clear what each player had been clearly instructed to do on the pitch. It looked as though Ghana resorted to a 4-2-3-1, Afriyie-Barnieh as the arrowhead, Simba playing directly behind him with Issahaku and Nuamah playing out wide from the flanks buttered by Essiem and Nsobilla in midfield but this whole setup barely got anything going for them in the game. They failed to create meaningful chances in the first half, the first few minutes of the game saw Nuamah and Simba whip two crosses across the face of the goal bar that the team struggled for consistency and possession in the game.
A good coach reads the game very well and can effect changes when the need arises. The second half saw the withdrawal of captain, Afriyie Barnieh and Sylvester Simba for Emmanuel Yeboah and Hafiz Ibrahim and it was least surprising that the substitution paid huge dividends.
Five minutes later, Fatawu Issahaku bossed a ball from midfield cleverly put second-half, Emmanuel Yeboah who selflessly released the ball to the on-rushing Ernest Nuamah to tap home from close range, 1-0.
Over the years, Ghanaian coaches have been noted to effect late changes in games even when their teams are losing but Coach Tanko and his technical team need loads of commendation for subbing off players who couldn’t impact the game the way they wanted them to do in the first half.
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It’s often the joy of coaches to see their substitutions positively affect the game and that is what Romanian-based striker, Emmanuel Yeboah replicated on the field. Before Ghana’s first game of the Mundial, he had bagged a hattrick against Zamalek U23 in a friendly game making a strong case to the technical team about the need to start the opening game. Well, he was overlooked for the captain, Daniel Afriyie Barnieh, who was thrust with the mandate of spearheading the attack for the country in the opening game but the plan failed to work to perfection.
The “99 ideas” striker was brought on in the second half and what followed was purely magical, an assist to Ghana’s first goal, a second goal from the flanks where he beautifully bullied his marker to bundle home, the third from a penalty after, Edmund Arko Mensah had missed two penalty retakes.
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In what looked as though, the Black Meteors had recorded an emphatic victory over Congo, something unfamiliar happened, the team conceded two late goals in additional minutes of regulation time and that raised a lot of questions as to what prompted that, others have suggested a lapse in concentration whiles others have held a different view from that suggesting that it could be complacency but whatever accounted for that, it’s anticipated that the boys won’t repeat such a feat against, host nation Morocco on Tuesday,27,2023.
