Ghana
SEJSUMMIT

  • Football

    The Ghana national football team represents Ghana in international association football and has done so since the 1950s. The team is nicknamed the Black Stars after the Black Star of Africa in the Flag of Ghana.

    It is administered by the Ghana Football Association, the governing body for football in Ghana and the oldest football association in Africa (founded in 1920). Prior to 1957, the team played as the Gold Coast.

    Football

Although the team qualified for the senior FIFA World Cup for the first time in 2006, they had qualified for four Olympic Games Football Tournaments when the tournament was still a full senior national team competition; their best achievement was the third position at the 1992 Summer Olympics. The team has won the Africa Cup of Nations four times (in 1963, 1965, 1978, and 1982) and has been runner-up 5 times (in 1968, 1970, 1992, 2010, and 2015). After going through 2005 unbeaten, the Ghana national football team won the FIFA Best Mover of the Year Award and reached the second round of the 2006 FIFA World Cup. At the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, they became only the third African team to reach the World Cup quarter-finals, and in 2014 they competed in their third consecutive World Cup.

Rivalries

Ghana vs. Nigeria in the 2008 Africa Cup of Nations Quarter-Final. The Black Stars' main footballing rivalry is with the Super Eagles, the national team of Nigeria. The "Battle of Supremacy on the Gulf of Guinea" is between two of the most successful teams on the African continent. The proximity of the two countries to each other, a dispute between the different association football competitions and wider diplomatic competition for influence across West Africa add to this rivalry.

Did You Know:

Roy ‘The Black Flash’ Ankrah was Ghana’s first professional fighter to achieve international recognition. He fought in the Featherweight and Lightweight classes and won the British Empire Super Featherweight title. He was well known in Ghana and West Africa having fought in the United Kingdom in 1950.

Ghana’s First World Champion

In September 1975, in California, David Kotei, also known as D.K Poison became the first Ghanaian World Champion in boxing. He defeated Rueben Olivares by a split decision, to win World Boxing Council title.

Did You Know:

Since 1957 Ghana has had thirty-two different head coaches and three caretakers. C.K. Gyamfi is the most successful of these, leading the Black Stars to three Africa Cup of Nations titles – in 1963, 1965 and 1982 – making Gyamfi the joint most successful coach in the competition's history.Fred Osam Duodu led the Black Stars to their 1978 Africa Cup of Nations title; Ratomir Dujković, Milovan Rajevac, and James Kwesi Appiah, have all led the Black Stars to World Cup qualification