Satellites Coach Zito explains Ghana’s penalty kick heroics against Niger

Head Coach of Ghana’s Male U-20, Abdul Karim Zito says the penalty-taking prowess displayed by his team during their win over Niger is the handiwork of his training ground regimes.

The Black Satellites secured victory over Niger in the semi-finals of the WAFU Zone B U-20 Championship currently ongoing in Benin on Tuesday.

The game failed to produce a winner after extra time and eventually proceeded to penalty shootout.

Often regarded as Ghana’s scourge, approaching shootouts was a scary moment for most Ghanaians.

However during the process, the Black Satellites players displayed ice-cold composure and excellence in their shooting abilities to convert all 5 kicks.

Reserve goalkeeper William Essu who came on to replace first choice Ibrahim Danlad for the shootout was first to convert his expertly, before others followed.

Speaking to Kumasi based Silver FM in the aftermath of the game, Coach Karim Zito revealed that he had repeated penalty taking scenarios throughout his training sessions and this paid off in the win over Niger.

“Penalties are often Ghana’s bane. So as part of my training, penalties are practiced at the end of every session,” Zito told Silver FM.

“We tried this severally before leaving Ghana for the tournament.

“The goalkeeper we introduced for Danlad is good at taking penalties and also his frame makes him a good option to scare opponents in shootout scenarios.

“So we always leave one change available for such an instance. It is something we practice at training and you can see that for once we were able to score all the kicks.

“We were repeating this all the time so we were certain of those who would take the kicks,” he concluded.

Ghana by virtue of the win over Niger qualifies to the final of the competition where they face Burkina Faso.

Ghana has also booked a spot at next year’s Africa U-20 Cup of Nations in Mauritania.

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