AFCON 2023: Ghana chokes again

If you are still in denial, I am here to tell you that last night happened. It was all real.

The Black Stars choked at the AFCON. Again.

Yes, Ghana went ahead twice against Egypt through the Abedi Pele-regen that is Mohammed Kudus. Still, they found a way to bottle it.

But who is responsible for Ghana’s latest disappointment on the big stage?

Chris Hughton

Even Chris Hughton’s best admirers – and I am one of them, will admit this has not gone according to plan.

It is hard to tell which of Ghana’s structural issues have been solved by Chris Hughton. And he’s been here for nearly a year.

On Thursday night, there was a sense of deja vu as Ghana suffocated at the AFCON.

The Black Stars have failed to win any of their last six matches at the Biennial football showpiece in a run stretching back to 2019 against Guinea Bissau.

For the most part, the four-time African champions have looked completely disfigured.
Thursday night was no exception.

Ghana completed just 11 progressive passes against Egypt (excluding passes from the defensive 40% of the pitch).

Ghana made 23 final third passes, one cross from open play and created no chance against Egypt.

Against Cape Verde, the Black Stars made 24 progressive passes and 26 final third passes. Cape Verde played more final third passes (27) than Ghana did. Ghana created two big chances and had four crosses from open play.

Evidently, this team has not been trained to play a possession-based game or a direct, crossing-dependent game.

What further indicts Hughton, is the lack of solidity at the back.

In two matches, Ghana have conceded five chances and seven open-play crosses, and have allowed 61 final third passes. Sixty-one.

So you have a team that is not engineered to attack and not properly coached to defend either.

What about in-game management? You know, the structural adjustments and substitutions coaches make ostensibly to influence matches.

When injury forced Ashimeru Majeed off, Egypt had control of the game thanks to their structural adjustments.

Hamdi Fathi was liberated to join the front four of Omar Marmoush, Emma Ashour, Mostafa Mohamed and Mostafa Fathi who can on for Mohammed Salah.

With six players, Egypt had the numbers to find the relevant combinations and started flooding Ghana’s wide areas with overloads.

The Pharoahs started stretching Ghana’s defence and created their best chance of the game.

When Ghana had the ball, Egypt still had the shape and numbers to prevent any significant damage.

What did Chris Hughton do? Nothing.

It was as if the Ghanaian technical team were waiting for the players to, by themselves, fashion out a way to survive the desert storm.

It did not happen. Instead, Inaki Williams who was knackered from all the exertions, made the first mistake.

Next, substitute Osman Bukari, who was covering for Denis Odoi, lost possession immediately after winning it back.

You know what happened next.

Chris Hughton may have engineered the best first-half performance in a year, but his inability to adequately respond to Rui Vitoria’s tactical tweaks left Ghana with too much to do.

After Ghana’s opening day loss to Cape Verde, Denis Odoi said the team’s structure made it too easy for Cape Verde to play through the lines and find players in space and in Ghana’s half. In other words, the structure was not good enough.

Alexander Djiku, Andre and Jordan Ayew all spoke about how the team was not aggressive enough. In other words, the team ought to have played with more authority and initiative. And why not?
If Ghana cannot play on the front foot against Cape Verde, then we might as well not show up.

But as it turns out, Hughton is risk-averse and is not prepared to coach this team to play on the front foot.

Jordan Ayew

Come on, man, is this all you have?

• 0 shots
• 1 touch in the opponent’s box
• 1 key pass
• 0 successful passes into the final third
• 0 dribbles completed (2 attempts)
• Dispossessed 6 times
• Lost 12 out of 18 duels
  

Perhaps we should have played my grandmother there!

Throughout the tournament, we have watched with admiration as big characters have stepped up and made significant contributions.

Just before the Black Stars played, Emilio Nsue, scored the AFCON’s first hat trick in 16 years as Equatorial Guinea beat Guinea Bissau.

Before that, Ounahi, En-Neyseri and Ashraf Hakimi were dominant as Morocco dispatched Tanzania.

Before the Black Stars played Egypt, Troost-Ekong put up a dominant display, dragging Nigeria to victory over hosts Ivory Coast.

I could go on and on. But you get the point.

The excuse for Jordan’s listless performances has often been that because he excels at Crystal Palace, he must be doing something the untrained eyes cannot see and therefore not appreciate.

That jaundiced view is borne out of the assumption that the tactical needs of Ghana are the same as those of Crystal Palace. Or that Ghana coaches have to set the team up to suit Jordan Ayew, willy-nilly.
Even if that creates a structural imbalance.

The truth is, Jordan does not have any complicated task in the Black Stars. He, like any forward, is expected to contribute to goalscoring and chance creation.

But Jordan does not. He hardly completes meaning dribbles, crosses, key or final third passes. As for goals, he once went nearly two years without scoring for the Black Stars.

Yet, “Jordan-sexuals” swear he is the best thing to have happened to Ghana since the legendary Asamoah Gyan.

No, he is not.

On a night when Ghana needed big characters to step up, Jordan put in possibly his worst display in a Ghana shirt and there has been a number of them.

“Are we disqualified yet? Are we? Wait, If we are disqualified then you can speak.”

Jordan said in response to a journalist’s question on whether the current group would have failed if they are unable to make it past the group stage.

No one can fault Jordan for being optimistic in his pre-match comments. But his failure to back those words with a strong performance, made last night even more disappointing.

“We didn’t concentrate for 90 minutes in our first game, and that’s what cost us,”.

“But we’ve learned from our mistakes and we’re now fully focused on the task at hand. We need to stay aggressive and play to our strengths. I have faith in my teammates and the coaching staff, and I’m confident that we’ll have a positive result tomorrow.”

Well, there goes your positive result.

Inaki Williams

Yeah that was bad. Tired legs, loss of concentration, or simply a miss-timed pass. Whatever it was, it should not have happened. Not with the stakes that high.

But it did happen and Inaki’s back pass resulted in Egypt’s first goal discredits him.

Inaki divides opinion.

To some fans, he has played in every forward position since making his debut in 2022 but has not impressed.

Others maintain that he has not received meaningful service from his teammates.

Against Egypt, Inaki Williams received nine passes in the 73 minutes that he played. Of those nine passes, only two were received in attacking positions; one in the penalty box and another in the half space.

Otherwise, he received the ball in areas where he was surrounded by red shirts or did not have the skillset (herein case the dribbling ability) to get past players.

It could be that his teammates do not trust him enough to pass the ball to him. Or the structure makes it impossible to be found as consistently and in areas where he can be influential.

The latter school of thought has quite some value.

At Athletic Bilbao, Inaki’s starting position is significantly higher up the pitch. His most significant engagements with the ball happen closer to the box or in the box.

And for a player who had no football education in Ghana, it should not surprise anyone that his acclimatisation has taken a while.

When Inaki scored a late winner against Madagascar in the World Cup Qualifiers on November 17, 2023, he was expected to kick on.

But for that to happen, significant adjustments out to be made for Inaki to find his natural habitat.

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