Ghana coach Avram Grant says the Black Stars can still qualify to the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.
Speaking ahead of tonight’s International friendly with South Africa in Durban, Grant has heaped praise on his team and said the squad has enough quality players and despite the draw with Uganda in the first game, the team can still make it out of the group.
“This is not the same squad of 10 years ago with a lot of individual skills. Michael Essien that was my best player at Chelsea, Munthari, fantastic player with a lot skill and Steven Appiah that was captain always the leader in his club in Europe.
“This is a different squad they have other qualities, and the quality they can be together and they can fight. We can go to the World Cup and this team has enough quality to qualify,” he said.
Grant says each player in the Ghanian squad must be given a chance to prove himself. The Israeli born coach says the absence of some of the first team players in the World Cup Qualifier against Uganda was not felt because their replacements have proved themselves.
“This squad suffered with a lot of bad luck. Key players like Kwadoh Asamoah is out injured, Gyan was injured most of the time, Andre Ayew was injured a lot of time, Jonathan Mensah was injured 15 minutes before the Uganda game. And even with these injuries we didn’t feel it beacuse we won a lot of games. So each player that plays proved themselves not because of the colour of their hair or they come from a nice family but they are playing because they have proved themselves.”
He says many more of players will get their chance to prove themselves in tonight’s friendly with South Africa. Grant adds that he will use the friendly to correct on the previous mistakes made.
“I think in this game we want to first correct Individual mistakes that we had in the last games like we did all the time and I want to achieve it by trying other systems like we did against Russia. In football today you need to be well trained about two systems and secondly to see also other players that didn’t play much to see if they deserve to be there.
And Grant has called for proper preparation of the team ahead of the crucial second World Cup fixture against Egypt.
“We need to learn from the Rwanda game and the Uganda game and solve one problem or two. This is not professional, these are not things we did before. We need to learn why we did well in Africa Cup and continue with this because since then we didn’t do it.
“It is not about financial problems, its how we react. We need everybody together from the politicians, to help the players have the peace of mind like in every country. And because of this we can’t perform 100 percent which I am not happy with but it is the situation but if we correct the mistakes, we have a strong team that can win anywhere in Egypt and perform well even in the World Cup.”
