Kwesi Appiah’s confidence must translate into results

Ghana’s failure to qualify for next year’s African Nations Championship (CHAN) for the second time running presents very challenging times for the Ghana Football Association and national coach Kwasi Appiah who failed in his first major test. While some want to deal leniently with Appiah because he spent barely a little over two months to prepare the team, the buck still stops at his doorstep as the head coach as he would have milked the plaudits if the Black Stars B had made it to Kenya 2018.

Making it to CHAN 2018 was one of Appiah’s key performance indicators just as making it to the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Cameroun and the FIFA World Cup in Russia even though his predecessor, Avram Grant, might have blown Ghana’s chances after two games in charge.

However, Appiah’s assurance that all is not lost and his confidence that the Black Stars could still turn the World Cup qualification around is music to the ears. In fact, this week the coach has been making all the right noises. First, he told the Graphic Sports that he wanted to put the CHAN nightmare behind him and focus on rescuing the 2018 World Cup campaign, while reiterated his belief in an interview with fifa.com that Russia 2018 was well within the reach of his charges.

In third position behind Egypt and Uganda, Ghana has a very slim chance of making it to a fourth consecutive World Cup after a rather sluggish start to the qualifying campaign. But it still remains an achievable feat if Appiah can inspire the same confidence in his charges to rev up the team’s ‘engine’ and approach the remaining qualifying matches with the same zeal with which the Stars qualified for their maiden campaign in 2006.

In fact, the Stars are in an almost similar situation that the team found themselves during the qualifying campaign for Germany 2006 when they made a sluggish start with a loss against Burkina Faso and also drew at home to DR Congo. However, when Serbian coach Ratomir Dujkovic took over the team, he managed to inspire confidence in the players who climbed up from the third spot to claim the group ticket at the expense of South Africa and DR Congo.

Next week, when the Stars reassemble to take on Congo in a double header, Appiah and his charges must work hard to win both legs in Kumasi and Brazzaville to make up grounds on group leaders Egypt, who have a difficult two-leg encounter against second-placed Uganda. The manner in which the Stars execute next week’s clash with the Red Devils in Kumasi will determine if Appiah’s confidence is on solid ground or is just another pipe dream.

When the coach released his squad for the Congo games, it was very encouraging that he looked beyond the familiar names and invited some young and talented players, including some debutants, just as he did for the Nations Cup qualifier against Ethiopia two months ago which saw debutants Raphael Dwamena and Ebenezer Ofori paying back the coach’s confidence in them by scoring three goals between them.

It is the expectation of the Graphic Sports that Appiah and his players will draw inspiration from Ghana’s amazing turnaround 12 years ago, revive the Russia 2018 campaign with emphatic victories against Congo and maintain the momentum for the remaining clashes with Uganda and Egypt later in the year.

For Appiah, leading Ghana to Russia successfully will be an amazing personal victory and also erase the wrongs of the 2014 World Cup after he supervised the team’s implosion at the last tournament in Brazil.