OPINION: Ghana’s defeat to Senegal opened up a can of worms

The Black Stars failure to tame the Teranga Lions of Senegal in their opening Group C match at the AFCON 2015 has opened a can of worms regarding the team’s preferred choice of system, organization of the defence and holding midfield, timing of substitutions, concentration levels of players and attacking deficiencies.

Many have tried to hold brief for Coach Avram Grant with the lame excuse that he just took over and 17 days was just too little for the Israeli to know his players. Well, I think this argument has been flawed by several examples including Alan Pardew’s move from Newcastle United to Crystal Palace, where he recorded a stalemate in his first game and supervised successive wins in his next two matches in charge.

I get even more puzzled when I think of Coach Grant’s inability to diversify the team’s system against Senegal at several points of the game since we were told that he convinced the Ghana FA during his job interview that he has observed the Black Stars for the past few years and knows the team inside out.

Coach Grant’s first “unpardonable football sin” was to adopt a system without taking the opponent into consideration. The former Chelsea Boss employed the 3-5-2 system, which is characteristic of wing play, in a clash with the Teranga Lions, who paraded a number of tall and physical players. It became obvious that crosses from wingbacks Harrison Afful and Baba Rahman would easily be obstructed by the Senegalese players, who are strong in the air.

Though nations like the USA and Germany exposed the weakness of the Black Stars defence at the 2014 World Cup, the back three of Daniel Amartey, Awal Mohammed and Jonathan were disorganized and exhibited loss of concentration at several points in the match. The plight of the defensive trio was even worsened by the holding midfielder Rabiu Mohammed, who failed to put a decent passes through to a team-mate as his position became porous and exploited by substitute Moussa Sow to net the match-winner. Emmanuel Agyemang was mainly operating as a winger so the support for Rabiu Mohammed was not exactly existent.

Were the substitutions by Coach Grant effective? That’s a question a colleague asked me in a post match analysis. I think the substitutions were good but did not effective based on the wrong timing of those changes. Mubarak Wakaso came off at the right time (68^th minute) for Christian Atsu, who had become ineffective but Afriyie Acquah and David Accam were introduced in the 82^nd and 86^th minutes respectively, which for me was rather too late for these youngsters to impose themselves on the game.

Though the Black Stars showed promise in attack in the opening 20 minutes of the game with a good partnership between Christian Atsu and Jordan Ayew, the attacking machinery grew more ineffective as the game progressed. Post match statistics have shown that Ghana recorded 5 shots wide, with only one shot on target. Perhaps, Avram Grant would have to hit the drawing board and remedy the blunders exhibited in the Senegal clash ahead of the second Group C match against Algeria.

By Dennis Mirpuri [Sports Journalist/Starr Fm]