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Brazil exposed Black Stars’ deficiencies:Kuuku Dadzie
The national team lost 0-3 to Brazil in a friendly international in Le Havre, France, before bouncing back three days later to defeat Nicaragua 1-0 in Spain at the Estadio Francisco Artés Carrasco in Lorca, Spain.
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For Dadzie, who was a key figure in the Ghana side that won the 1978 Africa Cup of Nations, Brazil offered Ghana a good test by exposing our deficiencies in defence, midfield and attack. However, the encounter with Nicaragua provided the opportunity for the players to play as a solid team ahead of the tournament.
“Perhaps, it is after the match against lowly-placed Nicaragua that Ghana’s technical team can be certain of their starting line-up for the Qatar 2022 World Cup tournament.
“The Brazil game was, therefore, a good test because it exposed our deficiencies as a team. So, of the two matches played, I believe that their preparation for the tournament is on course. For now, we cannot play any match again until our last match against Switzerland on November 17, which will offer another opportunity for the technical team to finally make up their mind on which players to use at a particular match,” said Dadzie, a former coach of the national U-20 female team, Black Princesses, and onetime assistant coach of the U-17 male team, Black Starlets.
Commenting on the lack of scoring chances and poor conversion rate by the strikers, he said it was the responsibility of Ghana’s technical team to psyche up the players, especially at training to enable them to execute the right scoring techniques during competitive matches.
However, he expressed the hope that the team would settle down and rediscover their scoring form.
“With time, the goals will come. This is because just as Ghana created many scoring chances against Nicaragua and scored only one, Brazil also created numerous goal- scoring chances against Ghana, but they converted only three. Football is full of uncertainties, so we should not condemn the players for squandering goal-scoring opportunities.
The technical team should rather embolden the strikers at training for them to appreciate the need to be calm at the goal areas to enable them to execute the goal-scoring opportunities that come their way. In training, the technical team should also boost their confidence level for them to be well composed at the goal area to enable them to convert chances that come their way,” he advised.
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Similarly, after Ghana’s lone goal victory over Nicaragua, Ghana’s Head Coach, Otto Addo, identified a lack of composure on the part of his players for their failure to convert the scoring chances that came their way.
“We need a little bit more composure on the ball and sometimes, we need a little bit of time making another cut. We have to keep it cool to score more goals,” Coach Addo said as he drew positivities from the team’s performance.
Dadzie was also of the view that for the team to be highly competitive in Qatar as they were at the 2010 tournament in South Africa, where Ghana reached the quarter-final stage, the team’s managers and coaches should prepare the players mentally to appreciate that representing Ghana at the highest level of football was an honour; hence, the need for them to be outstanding to raise their market value.