Coming off its participation in the 2022 FIFA World Cup and matched up against competitive but non world beaters, qualifying to the 2023 AFCON in Cote D’Ivoire should have been a foregone conclusion for Ghana.
However, with just one round of qualification games to play, Ghana’s Black Stars is yet to book its spot in the upcoming continental championship.
Despite amassing nine points and leading Group E via a point advantage over Angola and an extra point over CAR, Ghana still has some way to go before reaching the promise land.
As such, the September 7 clash against CAR at the Baba Yara Stadium is a must win for the Black Stars and this is the best possible outcome the team and nation can hope for to avoid what has become a near inevitable deep dive into arithmetic gymnastics to see who qualifies.
With Mohammed Kudus finally joining an English Premier League side West Ham after a frustrating off season, the Ghana- CAR game will have a new set of fandom itching to catch an early glimpse of what is to come from the Nima lad.
A handful of nations including Cameroon and South Africa have already named the squads for their respective games against the likes of Burundi and Namibia respectively.
Not surprisingly, Cameroon’s squad announcement has been dominated by Andre Onana’s inclusion in the face of the Manchester United goalkeeper’s retirement from international football. A spat with head coach Rigobert Song after refusing to back down from his aggressive risky but modern style for a goalkeeper, Onana left camp and anounced his retirement from international football in the heat of last year’s World Cup in Qatar.
How this drama unfolds either with a shock return to the Indomitable Lions or not, it is bound for the controversy filled diaries of Cameroon’s National Men’s Football Team. Still on the theme of controversy, the Black Stars aren’t that far off; in fact, there are legitimate reasons to be believe Ghana is worse than Cameroon.
After all, flying hard currency in a chartered plane to settle players threatening to strike prior to a crucial World Cup game is definitely an all-time high that surely will be tough to upstage.
An established player he was in the squad back then, Andre Dede Ayew has grown to become the unquestioned leader of the Black Stars since that infamous incident in Brazil.
Always in the eye of the storm of sharply divisive opinions, some of it self-generated due to his somewhat confrontational antics, he has become a staple in the team over the past decade.
However, due to a combination of a downturn in form and the rise of players with higher profiles like Thomas Partey and Kudus, Dede Ayew has objectively lost his stranglehold on this position in the Black Stars. Black Stars head coach Chris Hughton delivered this message by playing the double header against Angola sans the former Olympique Marseille player.
Ayew did return to the side against Madagascar but did little to justify his inclusion in the face of Inaki Williams injury enforced absence. At the time, Dede Ayew played limited minutes on Nottingham Forest’s team but is now a free agent who has been inactive in a professional, competitive game setting for three straight months.
Inviting him at the expense of active players would rob the Black Stars of the type of competitive edge to beat CAR in Kumasi next month. Beyond this, inviting an inactive player is a sure fire way to kill team morale in a setup that has struggled to lift this key piece off the basement.
That aside, beating CAR is way too important to depend on offensive production and in fact all round production from an inactive 33 year old who has been on the slide for a while.
On the flip side, there are better options in Dede Ayew’s spot in the forward line who deserve to be called up for this game after getting neglected for some time.
The Black Stars consistently struggle to score goals but what is quite alarming is that unlike previous years where Ghana created a ton of chances and scored just a few, chance creation has become a major problem.
Bernard Tekpetey
Three qualifiers into Hughton’s Black Stars head coaching career, the Stars have scored just twice and conceded once while having just five shots on target playing against Angola (away from home) and Madagascar. As such, inviting Ludogrets Razgrad’s Bernard Tekpetey must be a straight forward decision in the wake of the former Schalke 04 striker scoring seven goals and adding two assists in 11 games in all competitions.
For a guy who loves to attack from the wing areas either on the left or on the right, his fit is right for a Black Stars team that has the mobile Inaki Williams leading the line.
Williams often starts in central areas in attack but drifts off to the wings to create overloads while dragging defenders into uncomfortable half spaces away from goal. That leaves gaps for wing forwards like Tekpetey and Antoine Semenyo to run into and bear down on goal.
Abdul-Aziz Yakubu
The soon to be 25 year old has had quite a rocky ride ever since he played his way into contention for a call up to the Black Stars 2022 World Cup group. He missed out on a call up, the goals dried up somewhat and a move to Egyptian giant Al-Ahly fell through due to medical concerns before landing in China.
Moving to the Chinese Super League when the Asian country is some years off its spendthrift ways to get football legitimacy, showed how his very promising career had gone a bit sideways.
However, his time with Wuhan Three Towns has been an unquestioned success with the former Rio Ave striker scoring 15 goals in 20 games across the Chinese Super League, Chinese FA Cup and Chinese Super Cup.
At 6 foot 2 inches, Yakubu brings a dynamic the Black Stars lack (height) and unlike Semenyo, Tekpetey and Jordan Ayew, he is a throwback central striker. His style makes him an apt back up to Williams or even a replacement for Williams who is yet to find his feet in the Ghanaian colours.
In all fairness, Dede Ayew doesn’t deserve to be called to the Black Stars based on what Bernard Tekpetey and Abdul-Aziz Yakubu bring to the table and Chris Hughton should think along these lines and act accordingly.
