Kumasi — The Head Coach of the Black Stars, Otto Addo, has dismissed claims that the team lost to Angola as a result of the poor nature of the Baba Yara Sports aStadium pitch.
"I don't want to blame this loss on the pitch even though it was not good enough", he said adding that, "against Central African Republic, it was also not good but we won."
Coach Otto Addo stated this in his post-match interaction with the media after the team's loss to the Panclas Negras of Angola, last Thursday.
He, however, pointed out the need for the pitch to be improved, saying, "You have to work on the pitch to get better, because it's very difficult."
In his view, Ghana should have, at least, drawn the game, saying "we have to learn to be more clinical, to make earlier shots, at least, a draw would have been deserved."
Coach Addo commended the Angolan's goalkeeper, Adilson Da Cruz, for the great saves made during the dying minutes of the game.
"Congratulations to the goalkeeper, he saved some really good goals and at the end, I think we deserved a point at least."
"Surely, we have to be more clinical. I saw a lot of situations where we could have shot earlier, we should have been a little bit more egoistic", he emphasised.
In football, he said, "sometimes it's like that, if you don't score, sometimes at the end you get punished but we are still in the race despite the defeat."
Meanwhile, irate football fans caused a stir when they invaded the pitch after the defeat and threw 'missiles' and vandalised a few properties at the stadium.
If fact, the defeat left many of the fans brokenhearted, particularly the fact that the visitors had broken the 24-year invincibility of the Black Stars not losing at the Baba Yara stadium.
The fans threw plastic bottles and other items onto the pitch after Ghana conceded a 93rd-minute goal in the Group F encounter of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations Qualifier.
They kicked anything in sight and ended up destroying almost all the pitch panels installed at the stadium.
Police managed to arrest a fan in relation to the disruptions.
The incident, the latest in a series of fan misbehaviour during high-profile matches, is likely to draw a sanction from the continent's football governing body, the Confederation of African Football, according to experts.
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Ghana has previously been fined for similar incidents.
In January, CAF slapped a $15,000 fine on the Ghana Football Association for fan invasion.
That was after some fans breached security protocol in the Africa Cup of Nations group game between Ghana and Cape Verde on Sunday, January 14, 2024.
Four years before this fine, Ghana was fined an amount of $10,000 after a fan invaded the pitch during an AFCON 2021 Qualifier between Ghana and South Africa in Cape Coast in November 2019.
