Ghana FA boss encourages Black Queens to book knockout round ticket after Ivory Coast defeat
Ghana Football Association (GFA) President Kwesi Nyantakyi has urged the Black Queens to get over the opening match defeat to Ivory Coast in the ongoing WAFU Zone B Nations Cup to qualify for the next phase of the competition.
The Queens got off to stuttering note in the maiden WAFU Zone B Nations Cup following a 1-0 defeat to host nation Ivory Coast on Wednesday.
Mercy Tagoe’s women will face Niger, who lost their opening game to Burkina Faso in their second game of the competition.
And the nation’s football governing body president has implored the team to move on from the defeat to the hosts and beat Niger and Burkina Faso to book their place in the next stage of the tournament.
“Let’s learn from the mistakes that were made in the first game and then based on what the coaches are going to teach us we will and overcome whatever challenges we faced in the first game,” Nyantakyi urged the team.
“It is important that you progress to boost all of you confident because it is not good that you came and got knocked out in the first round. Ghana we don’t leave tournaments after first because if you do that you’ll set a bad record for yourselves, so try as much as possible to scale over at least the first round.”
He added, “I don’t know if you watched the second game between Niger and Burkina Faso, in my opinion the Niger team is the weakest in the group so don’t let people associate the Niger with Ghana. We want to run with Nigeria and Ivory Coast, and the rest of the teams.”
“But all in all I think it’s a good exercise because the main objective of this is to give you the opportunity to play as we are not playing in the qualifiers for the AFCON, that’s the main purpose of it but beyond that we should also be showing signs of having a good team and being capable of winning the championship so please let us try and overcome the defeat, it shouldn’t worry you at all. This one don’t create sleepless nights over it because it’s not going to be used to assess or do anything against you, I don’t think so but what’s important is for us to move ahead and i believe we are capable of winning the next two games against Niger and Burkina Faso.”
