Sports

Konadu: Be proud of the local Black Stars

Local Black Stars Head Coach, Maxwell Konadu has commended the players for the fighting spirit they put up in their bid to defend the West Africa Football Union (WAFU) Championship diadem.

He said despite losing the final game to the Senegal, the host and eventual winners, the Stars have every reason to be proud of themselves because they did all they could but was just not enough.

In his post match interview, Konadu said they went very close to realizing the dream of winning the trophy for the third time but it eluded them through the lottery of penalty shoot-outs.

The Black Stars staged a fierce rally after going down to a second half of extra time goal that came as a result of a defensive error to pull a fast equalizer within three minutes to stretch the game to penalty shootouts.

From the spot, the Senegalese proved their superiority by converting all three kicks with perfection while Ghana scored only one from the four attempts to lose 1-3.

It came as a big blow for the team that had vowed to spoil the Senegalese ‘host and win’ campaign but according to Coach Konadu, the performance of the boys must still be commended.

“We played well today; we may have lost but we did not disgrace ourselves. The performance was good but it was surely not our day.”

“To win a championship, you must be able to score goals; either in open play or from the penalty shoot-out but it was unfortunate our kicks at the most important time were not good enough.”

“The match wasn’t bad; it was a tough and very tactical match which was very good. The level was very high. We knew the Senegalese have a young and talented team. They are very athletic and used their height to bully us sometimes but we gave a good account of ourselves.”

According to Konadu, the plan to soak the pressure and catch the Senegalese on the counter back-fired as the team failed to neutralise the threat of the dangerous players of the local Terranga Lions.

“The boys have represented Ghana well. They put up a great performance but it appeared our tactics didn’t work when it mattered most. This happens in football. Instead of lamenting over the defeat, let’s look at the positives and build on them and at the same time work to improve the wrongs.”

BY ANDREW NORTEY  

Show More
Back to top button