Ghana's coach Avram Grant Wednesday showed his angry side when he was forced to cut short his final training, drive one-and-half hours from the training grounds to address a pre-match press conference.
On the Stars final training day ahead of Thursday afternoon's crucial second Group C game against Algeria, the Stars were sent to Oyala, a one-and-half hour drive from Mongomo for their training, and in the be middle of his work, he was asked to leave to address the press conference back at the Mongomo Stadium.
On his arrival, the Ghana coach did not mince words and told the gathering: "I have attended this conference out of respect for you here. But if this is the schedule, then it may be my last. I don't think the organisers take some of these things into consideration.
"At this moment, I have to be with my team. It is bad having to leave them to address this gathering, but it is worse having to drive more than an hour. That is an hour short of our training time. If they scheduled our conference time at this time, then they should have also considered our training venue distance," he stressed.
Representatives of the organisers were nowhere to be found to address concerns raised by the coach as the media officers had no clue. However, judging by the way the press conferences were held, the schedules were fixed based on the team's position on the group standings.
Algeria had theirs at noon followed by Senegal, then Ghana and South Africa followed in that order. Further enquiries also indicated that none of them had to travel beyond 30 minutes to train.
Beyond expressing his displeasure, Grant was very evasive on whether captain Asamoah Gyan would start in today's game.
"He is an important player to us not because he is the leader, but he is also an experienced striker. We definitely need him for the game and if he can play, why not. however, that decision will be taken tomorrow. He reiterated the team's desire to win today's game despite the "difficult” Algerian side they will encounter."
