The Black Stars dropped points for the first time in the ongoing 2017 African Cup of Nations qualifiers following a barren stalemate against Mozambique at the Estadio do Zimpate at Maputo on Sunday.
Ghana made it three wins out of three games in Group H when they defeated the Mambas of Mozambique 3-1 at the Accra Sports Stadium on Thursday. The return leg never saw any goal as Abel Xavier’s men held the four-time African champions to a goalless draw in Maputo.
Avram Grant made four changes to the team that started the home game. He handed Italian-based Alfred Duncan, Ebenezer Assifuah, Jeffrey Schlupp and Agyemang Badu starts..
Speaking after the game, the former Chelsea boss indicated that lack of precision on the part of his forwards eluded them the victory.
‘’We created enough chances to win the game but we didn’t score and at the end of the day we took one point and we have ten points now, so it depends on us to qualify.’’‘’We played to win the game, we created enough chances. We could have won the game. We were a bit sluggish unlike the first game. We had to do few chances in the tactics because key players were injured. The new players did well. They were fighting for every ball, so we played to win but you cannot always win.’’
The Israeli also lauded the performance of the Mozambicans, noting that their resilience in defense prevented Ghana from creating enough spaces, adding that his opponents have bright future.
‘’There are a lot of potentials. They played good football. They didn’t give us enough spaces to play. It was hard to do it. It was a good team. They have good future,‘’The first match too they played good football but here they were more careful in defense. They were a lot of men in defence to deal with the task. It made it difficult to create spaces today.’’
Ghana leads the group with 10 points and will play Rwanda at home in the next qualifying round.
By Daniel Osei
