Five lessons from Ghana’s 3-0 defeat to Algeria

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Ghanaians were on Wednesday, January, 5 2021, offered a sneak peek into what could happen to the Black Stars when they come up against the big teams at the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations.

An error-riddled Black Stars team suffered a 3-0 defeat at the hands of reigning AFCON champions with all the goals passing for the description “gifted goals”.

Though the score-line reflects an apparent disturbing performance from the Black Stars, there are a few positives that GhanaWeb noticed from the game.

In this article, we draw five lessons from the mortification of the Black Stars by Algeria.

Goalkeeping headache

As things stand Jojo Wollacott is Ghana’s first choice goalkeeper and from his initial matches is a good fit for the position.

The headache, however, is that in a tournament where injuries are not a rarity, Ghana could find itself in a difficult situation should Wollacot pick up an injury.

The performance of both Nurudeen and Ati-Zigi was nothing to write home about and Milovan Rajevac will hope that his first-choice goalkeeper will be fit for the duration of the tournament.

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Gideon Mensah was roasted

It remains to be seen whether Milovan Rajevac will stick with Baba Rahman as his first choice left back or opt for the more forward-thinking Gideon Mensah in the AFCON.

The signs however show that Gideon Mensah could perhaps not be the right person to fill the left back position.

The Bordeaux full back was out of sorts yesterday with all three Algerian goals coming from Ghana’s left side.

It could also be blamed on the failure of Joseph Paintstil to track back.

Fatawu Issahaku could be Ghana’s star at the tournament

Is there any superlative yet to be splashed on the 17-year-old yet? He was Ghana star in a dark performance against Algeria.

Ghana’s best chances were created by the youngster who on one occasion slid through a pass to find Benjamin Tetteh whose feeble shot was tamed by the goalkeeper.

Issahaku once against drifted into the middle and curled a good one which was parried by the Algerian goalie.

With Kudus likely to miss a chunk of the tournament, Milovan Rajevac could use Issahaku in the middle as his main creator.

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Black Stars not creating enough chances

Whereas the manner in which the team conceded the goals will be a big headache to Milovan Rajevac, the bigger challenge will be squeezing goals out of this team.

There were moments in the game where Ghana dominated and put together some decent passes, lacking from the play however is the creation of chances.

Bar the individual efforts from Issahaku, rarely did Ghana test the Algerian goalie with the team being lacklustre in front of goal.

In the first half in particular, Ghana dominated but could not find any decent opening. The XG for Ghana at the end of the half was zero.

Partey press or team press

Despite reaching the camp a day before the game, Thomas Partey led the pressing for the team. The Arsenal man and Edmund Addo gave signs of a good partnership with Partey focused on retrieving the ball whenever he loses it.

Problem however is that he is the only one in the team that appeared to have approached the game in that manner.

Whereas other players crawled back after losing the ball, Partey was insistent on recovering.

The pressing which is a feature of his Arsenal side could be an individualistic approach but coach Rajevac needs to decide whether the team will be pressing or using a different approach at the AFCON.

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