Ghana National Football Team - History

History

The Ghana Amateur Football Association was founded in 1957, soon after the country's independence, and was affiliated to Confederation of African Football and FIFA the following year. Englishman George Ainsley was appointed coach of the national team.

On 19 August 1962 at the Accra Sports Stadium, the Black Stars played Spanish giants Real Madrid, who were at the time Spanish champions, former European champions and intercontinental champions, and drew 3–3.

Charles Kumi Gyamfi became coach in 1961, and Ghana won successive Africa Cup of Nations titles, in 1963 and 1965, and achieved their record win, 13–0 away to Kenya, shortly after the second of these. They also reached the final of the tournament in 1968 and 1970, losing 1–0 on each occasion, to DR Congo and Sudan respectively. Their domination of this tournament earned the country the nickname of "the Brazil of Africa" in the 1960s. The team had no success in FIFA World Cup qualification during this era, and failed to qualify for three successive African Cup of Nations in the 1970s, but qualified for the Olympic Games Football Tournaments, reaching the quarter finals in 1964 and withdrawing on political grounds in 1976 and but making little progress in continent-wide competitions until the appointment of Burkhard Ziese as coach in 1991. The 1992 African Cup of Nations, after three failures to reach the final tournament, saw Ghana finish second, beaten on penalties in the final by Côte d'Ivoire.

Disharmony among the squad, which eventually led to parliamentary and executive intervention to settle issues between two of the team, Abedi Pele and Anthony Yeboah, may have played some part in the failure of the team to build on the successes of the national underage teams. Ghana slipped to 89th place in the FIFA World Rankings, but a new generation of players who went to the 2001 FIFA World Youth Championship final became the core of the team at the 2002 African Cup of Nations, and were undefeated for a year in 2005 and reached the finals of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, the first time the team had reached the global stage of the tournament. Ghana started with a 2–0 defeat to eventual champions Italy, but wins over the Czech Republic (2–0) and USA (2–1) saw them through to the second round, where they were beaten 3–0 by Brazil.

The Black Stars went on to secure a 100 percent record in their qualification campaign, winning the group and becoming the first African team to qualify for 2010 FIFA World Cup. The World Cup Draw in Cape Town on 4 December 2009 saw the Ghanaian team being placed alongside Germany, Serbia and Australia in Group D. They were able to reach the last 16 where they played the USA, defeating them 2–1 in extra time to become the third African nation to reach the World Cup quarterfinals. They then lost on penalties to Uruguay in the quarterfinals, having missed a penalty in extra time after a certain goal was saved off the line by Luis Suárez's deliberately parried handball who was then shown a red card for his actions.