‘Ghana’s Cosafa display is alarming’

Ghana FA technical director, Francis Oti Akenteng, has described the Local Black Stars’ recent defeat to Zambia in the Cosafa Cup as “alarming and unfortunate.”

The West African giants failed to stake a claim in the Cosafa Plate semis as they received a 3-0 lashing by the Chipolopolos on Wednesday – marking an end to a humiliating outing at the 2015 edition in South Africa.

The Ghana FA accepted to participate in the competition as a good platform to give exposure to coach Maxwell Konadu’s new batch of Local Black Stars after their last outing at the 2014 Chan. The team had since the competition been disassembled with a new one with supposedly the best performing players in the Ghana league this season now assembled.

But Konadu’s men failed woefully as first time guests at the Cosafa Cup tournament this year – conceding five goals with one to their credit in defeats to Madagascar and Zambia. Filled with individual errors, the Ghana team looked bereft of creativity, team work and assertiveness.

“The results is alarming and unfortunate but I must state I did not watch the games and have not heard from Maxwell [Konadu] too. I think we only accepted to even play in the competition because we wanted to give our boys the required exposure.

“We will have to wait and hear from Maxwell before drawing any conclusion,” Oti Akenteng said to Citi FM.

Meanwhile, Konadu, in an interview with Supersport TV, has admitted that the Local Black Stars must recover and improve tremendously before facing Ivory Coast over two legs in the qualifiers to the 2016 Chan tournament which will be hosted by Rwanda.

“We have a lot of work to do to ensure that we are able to qualify for the next Chan tournament,” the Ghana team ‘A’ assistant said.

He signals plans to augment his squad with a couple of the local players in the other junior national teams upon their availability after their respective duties.

“We have some of our good players in other national assignments so when we go by that time [to face Ivory Coast], everybody will be home so we can get a full squad to make sure that we qualify for the Chan,” Konadu ended.

Ghana were losing finalists at the last Chan tournament won by Libya.