Michael Akomeah, a Ghanaian sports journalist has analyzed the factors which have caused the Black Galaxies from qualifying to the 2024 CHAN tournament.
On Saturday, December 28, 2024, the Black Galaxies, formerly known as the local Black Stars were in a second-leg action against Nigeria to seek qualification for the 2024 African Nations Championship (CHAN) set to be co-hosted by Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia.
Further, Ghana could not secure a qualification ticket to the tournament since they got thrashed by the Nigerian team in a 3-1 score line.
Michael Akomeah in an interview with 3Sports on December 29, 2024 digested the causatives which had dumped Ghana’s team from not making it into the forthcoming African Nations Championship scheduled to take place in the second month of next year.
“It’s quite disheartening and frustrating with how our various national teams have performed looking at the year under review. The Black Galaxies shocking 3-1 lost to their arc rivals has ended their 2025 qualification dream, but how did we get here?
“Firstly, I believe this team is poorly coached. You look at the players that we have this time around as compared to last two years when we went to Algeria, I would say there is not so much difference when it comes to player quality and this was an opportunity for these players to make another history in qualifying the nation to CHAN 2025,” Akomeah said.
He then added that, the coaching prowess of the head coach for the Black Galaxies, Didi Dramani were questionable, laying emphasis on how the coach decided to set his team up and the technical instructions he gave his players to execute on thee field.
“The whole system, the structure, the tactics, and the set-up failed to bring the best out of these players especially by playing an away game against a Nigerian team that was so compact against you at the Accra Sports stadium, you don’t need to go with a high line but we saw a high line versus the Nigerian team that has pacey attackers or forwards and they usually lopped the ball over our center backs and they had so many 1V1 situations and two of them resulted in goals for them,” he revealed.
Plus, Michael Akomeah also claimed that, aside the tactical ineptness of the Black Galaxies coach, he is of the view that the team also lacked mental strength had led to them conceding three goals in the space of nine minutes.
“Away from the system, I strongly believe that this team is mentally fragile, I don’t know how we (coaching staff) worked on their mentality, I don’t know how the nation actually thought about their mindset going into such crucial encounters against their arc rivals.”
” Believe you me, you concede the first goal, concede the second goal, concede the third goal in the space of nine minutes, if you’re mentally tough, after you’ve conceded the first goal, usually there are things you could step up to do to help maintain the pressure or cool down the pressure and put yourself back into the game but this team broke down, made so many mistakes after conceding the first goal and they conceded two additional goals making it 3-0 in the first half even before a consolation goal by Stephen Amankonah which couldn’t secure a draw or a win to qualify to CHAN 2025.”
“I believe these two things played a massive role in how we failed to qualify. It’s a poorly coached team and this team is mentally fragile,” Messiah Akomeah revealed.
