adminMALABO. — Ghana coach Avram Grant has praised his team’s fortitude following their performance in the African Cup of Nations soccer semi-final against hosts Equatorial Guinea which was disrupted by fan violence on Thursday.
Grant’s side won 3-0 to book a spot in the final where they will play Herve Renard’s Ivory Coast.
“Before the tournament we had a good training camp in Spain,” Grant told reporters yesterday.
“I spoke a lot to the players about mentality. One of the things that is important in sports and in life as well, is to recover after you lost a game.
“We spoke about what would happen if we win because we were in a tough group. They called our group the group of death, I call it the group of living.”
The game was overshadowed by a long delay as the home fans hurled plastic bottles and other projectiles on to the pitch. Riot police intervened and a security helicopter flew over the stadium to disperse home fans.
“It’s vital to show a strong mentality,” Grant added. “We lost the first game, we won the second in the last minute. The third game we had to win, we came back to win 2-1. Every game we’re playing better football and we’re scoring a lot of goals. For two years, I lectured around the world with people asking me what to do when you lose.
“This is part of life, you need to look for a solution to pick yourselves up. I was looking for this from players and they did it well, they picked themselves up and they showed Ghana that they could count on them.”
Ivory Coast defeated Democratic Republic of Congo 3-1 in a one-sided semi-final.
“It’s good to go to the final,” Grant said.
“No one gave us a chance, they spoke of other teams, saying they were better than us, but no one gave us a chance.
“We are in the final and now we want to win the cup.”
The final is at the Estadio de Bata tomorrow night.
Meanwhile, Christian Atsu says the Ghana team is focused and not carried away by their Afcon 2015 finale feat.
The Chelsea winger reveals the target of doing the main business in tomorrow’s final over Ivory Coast before thinking of celebration.
The Black Stars took a cautious approach to the tournament and diligently eased past hosts Equatorial Guinea 3-0 in a gruelling semi-final which was later marred by crowd troubles in Malabo.
The crowd incidents began after Gabonese referee whistled and pointed to the spot following a clip by Equatorial Guinea goalkeeper Felipe Ovono on attacker Kwesi Appiah. Jordan Ayew converted the spot kick to give Ghana a 1-0 lead in the 42nd minute before Mubarak Wakaso benefited from a sweet counter-attack to slot home the second in the first half added time. — AFP.
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