The Black Meteors are through to their first-ever U-23 Africa Cup of Nations after a good display at the Setif Stadium to eliminate the Fennecs of Algeria.

The Algerians had played out a 1-1 drawn game at the Accra Sports Stadium days before so the general chorus was that the Meteors will be eliminated.

But Coach Ibrahim Tanko and his boys defied all the naysayers to sail through.

The road to reaching this far has been tough. The Meteors had to scale several hurdles including backlash from fans to make it on the flight to Egypt.

“We are so happy. We are proud and the most important thing is that we qualified,” captain Yaw Yeboah said after the game.

Yeboah had become a subject of backlash among fans after he missed a penalty in the previous game and went into the press conference to complain about the bad state of the pitch.

After the game against Algeria, he reiterated the importance a good pitch has on a player’s performance.

“I spoke about the pitch. We didn’t have a good pitch in Ghana that is why we couldn’t make it. The pitch here is better even though it was artificial, the grass looked better. I told my boys that we had the quality over them, we are faster than them so we need to put the ball on the ground and move the ball as fast as possible.”

As captain of the side, a lot is expected of him and he delivered on the day when his brilliant controlled to the goal in Setif.

He said: “I am super proud about my goal as well because it was not an easy goal. It was a great goal because I fought for the ball and then I was lucky that I was able to handle the ball throughout to score the goal and the feeling was good. The victory is for everyone.”