Ghana FA aim for sustained success after World Cup show

The Chairman of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), Kwesi Nyantakyi, says he wants the Black Stars to break into the top ten of the Fifa rankings. (Photo: The Black Stars’ performance at the 2010 World Cup captured the imaginations of fans across Africa and the GFA wants to build on that success )

Ghana were World Cup quarter-finalists in 2010 and rose to 15th in the global standings earlier this year.

They have since slipped back to 36th but Nyantakyi remains optimistic.

“Five years ago we were 50th in the world, there’s still a lot we can do to enhance our status,” he told the BBC’s World Football programme.

Nyantakyi is looking to the country’s youth set-up to help develop the team, with Ghana having won the Under-20 World Cup two years ago.

African teams in the current global rankings

Ivory Coast – 14th
Egypt – 34th
Ghana – 36th
Burkina Faso – 39th
Nigeria – 43rd

“[We will] maintain and consolidate our position as the best in Africa by extending our dominance into youth football,” he said.

But the progress of Ghana’s youth teams has stalled in recent months, with the Black Satellites failing to qualify for the current Under-20 World Cup in Colombia.

They did not win a single game at the African Youth Championship earlier this year in South Africa and assistant coach Yaw Preko told the BBC that their previous success had hampered them.

“We had a bunch of good players [in South Africa] but for some reason they choked, I think they couldn’t handle the pressure,” he told World Football.

“You know most of the time as underdogs you go in and deliver but as defending African champions, defending World Champions, I think it was too much for the boys – so they choked.”

The global rankings were introduced by Fifa in 1993 and a year later Nigeria reached Africa’s highest ever ranking of fifth in the table as they headed to the World Cup in the USA.

“Players get cocky and don’t do what they need to do on the football field,” Daniel Amokachi Former Nigeria international

One member of that side was Daniel Amokachi, who told the BBC that African teams which had had success at the World Cup – Cameroon in 1990, Nigeria in 1994, Senegal in 2002 and, maybe, Ghana in 2010 – tended to relax, rather than strive for even greater heights.

“I’ve always said we’ve had this African cockiness. You know we have this good outing [at the World Cup] and we think we’ve reached the top of the world and we stop focussing,” he said.

“Players get cocky and don’t do what they need to do on the football field.”

BBC Sport

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