The Cranes of Uganda put on a battling performance to hold the Black Stars to a 1-1 draw in Kumasi in the opening Group E World Cup qualifier.
In fact the Ugandans would feel hard done by on being unable to collect maximum points, as a soft second half penalty for a non-existent foul on Abdul Majeed Warris is what handed the Black Stars the equaliser.
The East Africans were the more motivated and focused side on the day, and it showed as they came very close to leaving Kumasi with the scalp of the group favourites.
In front of a packed but unsupportive Kumasi sports stadium, the Stars were unable to muster any sort of performance to bring the fans back to their side.
Kwesi Appiah named a squad very similar to his starting 11 at the world cup, returnee Jeffrey Schlupp the only new name in the squad from Brazil.
The Stars’ created a couple of good chances early in the first half, but Ugandan goalkeeper, Mamelodi Sundowns’ Dennis Onyango, was in the form of his life.
He first saved a great header from Gyan, who connected to Atsu’s cross after some brilliant work on the right by the Everton winger.
He then calmly collected an Andre Ayew shot, before making another great save after Gyan met a floating ball into the box first time.
Uganda scored just before the break, Ugandan midfielder Mawejje’s shot from the edge of the box skidding away from Fatau Dauda.
For a second after the Ugandan goal, I could swear I saw some Ghanaian fans heartily jubilating behind Fatau’s goalpost.
And monitoring social media, it seems a lot of Ghanaians were actually rooting against the Black Stars, so deep were the wounds they inflicted by the debacle in Brazil.
The second half was uninspiring for most parts, only the penalty for the Stars’ the real action in the half.
Warris danced into the box past a few defenders, and then went down like a sack after minimal contact from a Ugandan defender.
As captain Gyan is on a self imposed penalty exile, Andre Ayew stepped up and coolly converted to level the scores.
Uganda battled some more, hitting some good counter attacks but failed to score. The same was true for the Stars,, who despite some changes remained uninspiring and were lucky to escape the home game with a draw.
The result is reminiscent of one from 2003, that qualifying series being the last time Ghana failed to qualify for an African cup tournament.
Guinea’s earlier win over Togo puts them top of the group, and the next group games feature Togo hosting Ghana on Wednesday, whilst Uganda host Guinea.
There seem to be misdirection of anger in the Ghanaian football circle over what they claim was a poor outing of the Black Stars in Brazil 2014 world cup, surprisingly everyone is engulfed in the anger over poor performance rather than the disgraceful inhouse events that led to the onfield woeful performance. It all seem by the outpouring of anger by Ghanaians that good performances at the world stage is a preserve of the Black Stars, looking back at what happened in South Africa it was easy for Ghanaians to develop self conceited believes that Ghana could only surpass the South African near semi final performances and not anything worse than that.
This self conceited ideas is where 2014 Brazil world cup desaster came from. Ghana became trapped in the near semi final performance euphoria and suddenly self classified the Black Stars as an all time world cup greats, to an extent AFCON was no longer tournaments Black Stars could lay great achivements to, to them; the Black Stars are a world cup material and good only for the world cup. All the 3 AFCON tournaments Ghana participated in after the world cup in South Africa were a direct signal of the eminent decline in the Ghanaian football, yet the average Ghanaian on the street has developed the self coceited believe that Ghana Black Stars ranks only among the best in the world and not anyone country on the African continent, eventhough they continue to struggle against Africa oppositions.
Cameroon went through the same self destructive path in the past when Cameroon were the first great football torch bearers representing Africa on the world stage. Arrogance sets in, complacency and uncontrolled pride took the better of Cameroonean football fraternity until it became what it is today. Cameroon could call the bluff of CAF by introducing a sleeveless PUMA designed outfit for AFCON tournaments in clear contravention of FIFA standard jerseys rules. That is the extent uncontrolled pride can get a people to attempt doing anything close to what the Black Stars got themselves involed in Brazil by pushing their demand to a bizzare level of scrambling the government to take the most unpopular decision ever in football history of flying millions of dollars to Brazil in the full glare of world press.
Black Stars took the same complacency path, encouraged by an unmitigated overbearing pampering by the GFA backed by the government over the years, unreasonably protected and fought for by collaborators of the Football Association. The Brazilian disgraceful episode was no doubt coming and could have been less painful if Ghanaians had re-engineered their minds and accepted the South African perfomances of the Black Stars could just be a flash in the pan, one that had been achieved in the past by other African countries before, not one achieved by any extraordinary football pedigree of any kind because Senegal and Cameroon have been there in the past and all struggled to hold down the achievements years after. Several other European countries such as Bulgaria, Croatia, South Korea, Japan etc. have been semi finalists before but are today all world cup strugglers, others like Czech Republic, Sweden, Ireland and even England are regarded as infant performers at the world cup stage, least to mention Ghana which is just a recent world cup entrants.
The world cup has no preserved good perfomance for any country in the world, it is your preparations and your established football pedigree that guarrattees good outing at a world cup event, even that is no assurance as both Spain, the defending champions and Brazil the host country were dealt the most disgraceful history making record ever in the events of world cup. Therefore Ghanaians should not decieve themselves by fighting a course that is beyond them and refocus their attention in correcting or preventing from happening again the events of infighting that led to the disgraceful outing in Brazil. Enough of these self conceited believes that Black Stars are an all time world cup great performers. Ghana could for now re-establish its position on the African continent which is alreay becoming a pipedream anyway. Its been 35 long years without trophy.