The Ghana BlackStars escaped with a tight win against Nicaragua in Lorca, Spain in their second pre-World Cup friendly game in a space of 3 days.
On the back of being humbled by Brazil, the Otto Addo-led team was expected to regroup and get a win over Nicaragua which didn’t come on a silver platter.
A first-half strike from Sporting Lisbon winger Abdul Fatawu Issahaku was enough to separate the two sides at the Estadio Francisco Artes Carrasco in Spain.
I picked a few things from the game against Nicaragua tonight.
NO IDENTITY AND PATTERN
Otto Addo has overseen 8 games for the BlackStars, in all these, he’s managed 2 wins from it. From afar, this is no good at all, if he were a club manager he would have been long gone but the dynamics of managing a national team is different but that’s not to say that he shouldn’t impose his style of play and identity on the team. He needs to make sure this team plays by a certain pattern in the lead-up to the World Cup because on the global stage there’s no room for experimentation.
SET PIECES
The team created loads of chances in the game, that’s one thing you can’t take away from the setup, they created as many chances, had 19 goal attempts, 7 on target, and made 133 attacks in a space of 90 minutes but the sad thing is they made just 1 count. In the team’s play, they garnered 24 set pieces(corners and free-kicks) and from all these, they couldn’t convert a single one in these attempts. This implies that, if opportunities are hard to come by through open play, the team would find it difficult to use set pieces as an alternative to shooting themselves.
SLOW BUILD AND TRANSITION
It’s clear the tag of the Brazilians of Africa still reigns high on the minds of many but if the team is meant to be seen to play more progressive and attractive football a lot has to change in the lead to the World Cup. It’s important for players to move the ball faster, keep less of the ball, play more as a formidable unit and eschew individualism.
SUBSTITUTION
In modern-day football, substitution have a big way of impacting the game. Coach Otto Addo should be bold, and strategic in effecting substitutions to sway games to his favor. It’s worrying that he takes too long to do them subs and most often they barely have a positive effect on the game.
TEAM LACKED COHESION
I won’t be surprised if two-thirds of this squad make it to the World Cup bar any injury or any other factor but one glaring team that needs fixing is the lack of team cohesion. I partly agree with others who say most of the boys are new to the team but on the other hand, a host of them have been playing together for a while now so, to say the least they should know their respective strengths and weaknesses but it’s sad that they can’t string multiple passes, switch up play, read the runs of teammates, compliment each other and play above their weight levels.
Ghana will have one last friendly to play against Switzerland, hopefully, things would be different as we face Portugal, Korea, and Uruguay.
