A fortunate draw

May 26th, 2006 | By: Robert | 7 Comments »

This evening’s Turkey friendly, full of tension throughout, ended in a 1-1 draw. The Turks and the Stars sparred early, but Turkey earned first blood from a potent shot from Nihat and took the lead into the half.

A second half substitution of Sulley Muntari stabilized the midfield for Ghana, however, and the Ghanaians largely controlled tempo in the second stanza. Their forceful counterattack culminated in the 60th minute with a Matthew Amoah dagger, assisted perfectly by Captain Stephen Appiah. The remainder of the match saw continued back and forth among the sides, but a strong midfield and reinvigorated attack by Ghana, which had the lion’s share of the chances.

In sum, a strong Stars attack, still a suspect defense (with a nod to surprise starter Richard Kingston, who had a strong performance despite the early misstep), and a stabilized midfield showing good form for the lead up. With a more focused performance in the early going, Ghana could have prevailed.

How does this stack up versus its World Cup foes? As noted elsewhere, finesse teams like the Czechs might not take well to the hard tackling, physical style employed by the Black Stars, and Ghana could certainly play the role of a spoiler. Hard to see advancement though without a more focused 90 minute effort.

Tags: Group E

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Comments

By Bob | May 26th, 2006 at 4:40 pm

Good result considering the Black Stars haven’t played together in a long time.

Posted from United States

By Danny | May 26th, 2006 at 7:07 pm

Good result for team spirit but i wouldn’t mind if they had lost because this is friendliesand it lacks a bit of passion. its all going to be different on the d-day

Posted from United Kingdom

By Lyle | May 26th, 2006 at 8:26 pm

this is a nice draw. turkey is probably won of the top ten european teams. ghana needed a pick me up after all the commotion going on the last couple of months.

one thing i’d like to say is that a lot of US fans are totally disrespecting Ghana right now. they think you guys are a joke. they couldn’t be more wrong. all they know is that African football can be a bit dysfunctional and that Ghana didn’t make pass the group stages of the African Cup.

they have no idea what might happend to their beloved US team.

i hope Ghana has a fantastic world cup.

Posted from United States

By Kwabena | May 26th, 2006 at 9:32 pm

Ghana is just putting our team together, it look like we are bit late, but it will get the job done either way. Ghana is the unknown factor in our group, the least we show the better. Surprise!

Posted from United States

By Kwame | May 28th, 2006 at 10:58 am

I think our expectations during the forthcoming world cups is making us to put pressure on our players.Indeed it is comprehensively correct if a team preparing for the world cup always looses her trial matches.Nevertheless we as ghanaians here in Brasil are ready to make the necessary noise eventhough a lot of Brasilians don’t even know where ghana is situated on the world cup after several bashing in junior levels.Long live ghana ,long live Africa .To the coach I like his his carater being a bit hard,but he should not take this position to insult his players let alone the whole of black race(if he really said that)He should take a cue from the great Maurinho (Boss)of chelsea He is very demanding in terms of discipline but never makes loose statements.More grease to your elbow, Doya and the blackstars will raise high the Flag of ghana and the Africa.

Posted from Brazil