In his first game as a coach on the world stage, Kwesi Appiah led his Black Stars team to a 2-1 loss to the United States. Now in a group comprising of Germany and Portugal as well, most people saw this first game as our best chance for three points, yet it turned out not to be so.
There were some basic errors in Kwesi Appiah and his players’ approach to the game and unless these lessons from this painful loss are applied, the Black Stars might find themselves becoming worse as the tournament goes on.
Here are the four lessons Kwesi Appiah should pick from USA 2-1 Ghana
You start your best players in the toughest games
This is like coaching 101, you line up your team with the best players at your disposal. Obviously sometimes tactical demands lead to some better players being benched for inferior ones who can carry out a particular job better, but that is not what happened yesterday.
Kwesi Appiah after the game, in response to why Essien and Prince Boateng started from the bench, said he was saving them for when the US team got tired. I’m not even sure how that makes sense, since by benching these players you run the risk that when they come on later, your team might be irreversibly behind in goals. Both those players should have started, maximising our chances as we would have had our best 11 players on the pitch from the start.
You do not play your best player in Defence
If I were a coach, and I had Lionel Messi and Arjen Robben in my team, then I might consider playing one at left-back, since the other one would be left to cause havoc anyway. Now if I had only one of them, under no circumstances would I shunt him off to left back and leave vastly inferior players to try and break down the opposing defence.
This is not in any way a knock on our other stars, but Kwadwo Asamoah is our most skillfull and creative player, and playing him at left back is atrocious. Particularly when there are left backs in the team, and a left back was dropped from the final squad, and most of the play was channelled through the right. In fact, one of the few occasions the ball was played down the left flank it led to the equaliser, with which Kwadwo was vastly involved.
Concentration is key throughout the 90 minutes of a football game
Its debatable how much of this is actually on the coach, but the loss of concentration by the Ghanaian defence on those two occasions to concede those goals was criminal to say the least.
The entire defence seemed asleep as Dempsey zig-zagged through them to score less than a minute into the game, with John Boye even giving him a free pass into the penalty area. Conceding that early goal meant Ghana was always chasing the game, and the US were able to retreat into a defensive shape. The cluelessness with which the marking was carried out during the corner for the second goal was even more appaling. Kwesi Appiah and his team have a lot of work to do to brush out that tardiness from his defence.
Make Proactive and not Reactive changes
One of the hallmarks of the greatest coaches is the ability to recognise their mistakes and take steps to remedy them as the game goes on. The entire first half followed a similar pattern, the Black Stars were atttacking and attacking, whilst yielding little to no results from those attacks. Most of the play was channelled down the right, but Daniel Opare’s crossing was atrocious. Yet the right back continued throughout the 90 minutes of the game, wasting more and more crosses as the game wore on.
Jordan Ayew was obviously out of his depth, and it would not have hurt to make changes at half time to arrest the tide of the game. Yet Kwesi Appiah waited and dawdled on the touch line, hoping for a touch of inspiration—-his starting line-up was incapable of producing. We can never know, but some earlier changes might have changed the course of the game.
As we know, this was Kwesi Appiah’s first outing on a stage like this and inevitably there were going to be some blunders due to his inexperience. Last night’s game is gone, and the best we can hope for is that he learns from his mistakes and approaches the remaining games at a better level to glean some more respectable results for the Black Stars.
whatever I think he did fantastic his first appearance. He’s seen the game and knows what improvements he has to make. Go Akwasi Appiah, you did well #stillteamGhana #teamBlackStars
The simple fact is that this guy doesn’t know what he is doing and to make situation worse he has refused to listen. I was equally surprise when he mentioned in his post-match interview that he decided he will introduce KPB and Essien in second half when the USA team is tired. This is a ridiculous reason and can only come from him. This guy did the same thing at the cup of nations in South Africa so it is obvious he can never learn his lessons. When Coaches who know what they were about were trying systems play in their friendly matches before the tournament, our coach was still trying players and it is obvious he was still trying players in the USA match. Why i am saying this, he never used Opare in the two friendly matches he played prior to the tournament so he decided to try him in the US match and we all saw the outcome. This is the kind of coach we have. The point is, i will forever support the use of a local coach but for God sake there are better local coaches who can perform better than Kwasi Appiah. As you rightly said, we lost concentration and that resulted in the two goals and the coach also attributed our defeat to this same reason. What surprises me is that, we conceded similar goals under the same circumstances in most of the friendly matches we played ( Holland and Mecidonia or something not very sure of the name) but he did nothing to remedy the situation and now he is also complaining like any other Ghanaian when we have giving you a job to do. Behaving like our politicians, who have the mandate to solve problems but join the masses to complain about the problems. I like him as a person and i have always supported him but the simple fact is that he has shown over time that he is the wrong man for the job and it is time he is replaced. If you can’t apply simple coaching principles like selecting the right players and rightly positioning them on the field then what else can you do as a coach.