Kickoff
(Cape Town)
7 October 2008
Former Ghana international Anthony Baffoe is backing the Black Stars to beat Lesotho and reach the second round of the 2010 World Cup qualifiers, but says the players must rediscover their hunger to do that.
Ghana needs a big win to stand any chance of reaching the second round of qualifiers two years after reaching the second round of the 2006 event.
The struggles of the Black Stars on the road to South Africa 2010 has led to an inquisition about what has gone wrong and Baffoe, who worked closely with the team in Germany, thinks the answer may lie in the attitude of the players.
"These are some of the most successful players Ghana has ever had so they don't become bad overnight and I think they are not bad," he told KickOffGhana.com.
"But sometimes as a player when the adulation rises so much, when your name is everywhere, when you drive so many female fans to the game with the way they did after Germany, some slow down in their approach.
"The key thing for the players is to pause now and ask if they are as good as they used to be. On Saturday they will need a performance on the scale of what they did in Germany to go through. They will need to answer a lot of the questions on the pitch," he says.
Baffoe thinks the manner in which Group 5 has gone with Gabon and Libya still in with a chance of qualifying is a positive for African football and a measure of how far both sides have come.
"It goes to say you can't take anything for granted on the continent because everyone is getting better. After Germany 2006, the Black Stars became a marked team and the effort when other countries play us has doubled."
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