Why Black Stars have failed to win AFCON since 1982 (Part 1)

It will be foolhardy to predict that Ghana will end its 40+ years AFCON drought Cote d’Ivoire. Only the brave will – and there are precious few, mostly based on nationalism. After the ignominous exit at the last AFCON, most fans would follow the team’s fate with much caution.

One thing is guaranteed: if the campaign goes well the powers that be and to some extent the players will take the credit. But if things go pear shaped the coach and his staff will inevitably take the blame. That is just how it works.

Chris Hughton and his team are definitely up against it. But before we mount an Epitaph and start reading an obituary for the Black Stars latest campaign, it may help to reflect on just where Ghana has tripped at previous AFCONs and what the latest iteration of the Black Stars must overcome if they are to succeed. After conversations with coaches, journalists, and former national team players and a careful review of the Black Stars performances, I have distilled four decades of Ghana’s AFCON heartbreak into the following 10 significant factors.

1. Injuries

As Chris Hughton and his technical team sweat over the fitness and availability of Mohammed Kudus, an all too familiar occurrence is being replayed. Some football fans even go as far as to tag this as collusion between club and player to avoid the midseason grind of the AFCON. Fact or fiction, injury issues can derail a team’s challenge before it even starts. Michael Essien showed up at Angola 2010 with concerns over his fitness. He was not fit enough to start Ghana's first match, due to a hamstring strain. However, any optimism about his 45 minute second half cameo was extinguished days later when he went down during a training session.

He was out of the Africa Cup of Nations with a knee injury. In 2006, Stephen Appiah was at the peak of his powers. An injury at the beginning of the AFCON campaign disrupted the skipper’s participation in Egypt. In the final game, with Laryea Kingston suspended and a toothless Black Stars staring at elimination, a half-fit Stephen Appiah played on against Zimbabwe but could not prevent Ghana from crushing out. The repercussions of the strain he put on his injured knee will reverberate for the rest of Appiah’s career as he missed the next AFCON on home soil. One is left to wonder what could have been if a fit Appiah had been part of Ghana’s 2008 squad. Could Ghana have reached the final of South Africa 1996 if Abedi had been fit and available in the semi-final?



2. The penalty jinx

When a match involving the Black Stars goes into penalty shootouts, that match is as good as lost. At least this is what Ghanaians have become accustomed to. There isn’t enough time to mention in-match penalty misses, the most famous perhaps being Asamoah Gyan’s miss against Zambia in the 2012 semi-final. Ironically, Ghana’s last AFCON title in 1982 was won following a hard-fought penalty shootout victory against the hosts Libya in 1982.

The Black Stars have since lost 4 out of the 4 penalty shootouts they have been involved in including a pair of final losses in 1992 and 2015 against Cote d’Ivoire, a semi-final loss to Burkina Faso in 2013 and a last 16 exit to Tunisia in 2019.

On the back of this distressful record don’t expect much optimism among Ghanaians when the Black Stars face an opponent in penalties at the knockout stages of the upcoming AFCON; if they make it that far. The vexed question remains: why has Ghana been this bad in penalty shootouts at the AFCON? Is this down to back luck or incompetence from 12 yards? It is hard to tell! I will leave that to the researchers, psychologists, and spiritualists.


3. Bogey teams - Cote d’Ivoire

A bogey team is a team that either always beats your team or against which your team habitually suffers bad luck. Ghana had its share of bogey teams at the AFCON. Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana’s immediate western neigbours are the hosts of the next AFCON and a home away from home for a lot of Ghanaians, but the Ivorians have also been responsible for Ghana’s last two final losses at the AFCON. In the early 1990s the Elephants inflicted painful back-to-back defeats on their their West African rivals.

The Ivorians won 11-10 on penalties in 1992 against Ghana to claim their first continental title and deny Ghana a fifth title. The luckless Abedi Pele watched on the sidelines, having picked up a suspension in the semi-finals against Nigeria. Abdoulaye Traore’s headed goal saw off the Ghanaians at the quarterfinals of the 1994 tournament in Tunisia.

Two spectacular goals from Abedi Pele and Tony Yeboah broke the sequence in 1996 but normal service was resumed at AFCON 2000 when Ghana lost 2-0 to the elephants at the Accra sports stadium. The Ivorians repeated the dose with a 3-1 Group stage win at Angola 2010. 5 years later they blocked Ghana’s path to the title and reduced another Ayew to tears, this time Andre.


4. Bogey teams – South Africa

An examination of Ghana’s AFCON bogey teams will be incomplete without the Bafana Bafana of South Africa. When South Africa re-entered CAF competitions in the 1990s, Ghanaians scoffed at the prospect that they were any threat whatsoever on the football pitch, even after a 2-1 win over the Black Stars in a friendly match in 1994. So, when the two teams faced off in the semi-final of AFCON 1996, very few people expected a drubbing, but that is exactly what happened as Bafana Bafana won 3-0 at the FNB stadium courtesy goals from John ‘shoes’ Moshoeu and Shaun Bartlet on their way to their first title.

Some Ghana fans would put that defeat down to the absence of Abedi Pele and the controversial chalking off of Tony Yeboah’s bicycle kick by Referee EL Ghandour, but any doubts about the superiority of the South Africans was erased at AFCON 2000 when Siyabonga Nomvethe’s goal propelled ten-man Bafana Bafana to eliminate co-hosts Ghana 1-0 to progress to the semi-finals. Ghana would have to wait until 2015 to secure a first win over Bafana Bafana at the AFCON.


5. Underestimating the noisy neighbours

Sir Alex Furguson famously said “Sometimes you have a noisy neighbour. You cannot do anything about that. They will always be noisy.” Ghana’s closest geographical neighbours have sometimes not only been noisy but pesky as the Black Stars have found out the hard way. Many Ghanaians recognize the might of Cote d’Ivoire, so perhaps defeats to them are easier to rationalize. Things are a lot different with the nations Ghanaians have traditionally looked down upon in football terms – Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso. On Feb. 12, 1998 Togo, considered as minnows by most Ghanaians, famously beat Ghana 2-1 at the AFCON in Burkina Faso to dent Ghana’s campaign.

Interestingly, it was the goalkeeper of Ashanti Goldfield Football Club (as it was known at the time) Nibombe Wake who thwarted the Ghanaians at every turn. Congo DR will finish the job four days later to send the Black Stars packing and effectively end the starry career of the legendary Abedi Pele in Ghana colours. In 2013, it was the turn of an Aristide Bance inspired Burkina Faso as they reached their first every AFCON final at the expense of Kwasi Appiah’s Black Stars.