Ghana – Uganda PREDICTION & PREVIEW (17.01.2017)

Win Ghana

Match for the opening day of group D of the African Cup that faces the selection of Ghana against Uganda.

Ghana is always one of the most powerful teams in the African continent and one of the clear hopefuls for the final victory. In fact, in recent years, at the block level, Ghana has been for me the most powerful and most compensated team in the whole continent. However, a pronounced tendency to fail at key moments, has relegated the black stars to not having risen with any title with one of the best generations of its history.

At the moment, the Ghanaian team is in the process of renewing the team that is so well-known but still has a group of very talented players (a marked lack in this African Cup, just as Côte d’Ivoire has just demonstrated). A team with several outstanding players per line, such as Acheampong, Baba Rahman, Jonathan Mensah, Acquah, Thomas Partey, Atsu, Amartey, Wakaso … and all of them, brothers Jonathan and André Ayew and historical forward Asamoah Gyan. All of them make Ghana a balanced and bright selection, with all their players in the leading leagues in Europe.

The Ghanaian team’s recent performance has not been particularly bright, with Egypt losing to the World Cup qualifier or their recent draw against Uganda in the same competition. However, important players like André Ayew were missing and the defeat in Egypt is not strange to me. In spite of everything, Avraam Grant is in the pillory and must make react to the equipment.

By contrast, Uganda is the antithesis of the Ghanaian national team. With a recent history very mediocre in football, is presented in this Cup of Africa as one of the positive surprises of the classification (we should not exaggerate the size of the “feat” to leave outside the CAN to the selections of Botswana and Comoros). However, I expect little from the performance of the Ugandans in the tournament. A very low profile selection with a large number of African (and not always top-of-the-line) players, including Egyptian Second Division players, or exotic squads from the Icelandic Throttur, Vietnamese clubs … highlights the presence of Kizito Of Rio Ave loaned in Feirense) and Farouk Miya (who has played a whopping 28 minutes in the Belgian league), giving a good idea of ​​the low profile of the Ugandan team.

In addition, Uganda has not had a good qualifying phase. They lost to Tunisia 2-0, beat a mediocre selection of the Slovakian league 3-1 and were defeated by Ivory Coast 3-0 in a game in which they were downright leaving a bad image.

As we see, there is an important difference in the quality and experience of both combined. In addition, Uganda’s recent results against Ghana-based teams show that there are a couple of scales between the two teams. I think the quota should be around 1.60, so it has value.

We do not go with a high stake because we already know the risks of the CAN: a major lack of talent, plots of debatable quality and surprising arbitration decisions. We must take care, “because this is Africa”;)