Ghana U-20 Captain Issahaku Konda says his charges can’t afford to miss the Africa Youth Championship to be held next year in Niger.
The Black Satellites beat Benin 3-1 on Saturday in the first leg encounter at the Cape Coast Sport Stadium.
Allagbani Saliou took advantage of his side’s counter-attack to fire past the Ghanaian goalkeeper to give the visitors a shock lead after 28 minutes.
Richard Danso, who had been out of class after wasting a lot of chances, drew the home side level on the hour mark before Konda’s struck 12 minutes later to put Ghana in the lead.
The Black Satellites sealed victory with six minutes to stoppage time when Danso hit his second of the afternoon to give Ghana a good chance ahead of the return leg.
After the win over the Benin, the Captain of the side reaffirmed the team’s main objective.
“It was a very tough game for us despite the scoreline, with the help of the coaches we won the game to make things a bit easier for us in the 2nd leg.” Konda said in a post-match interview.
“We did not know their strength initially, but now we know what we are up against and the coaches will know what to do to us at training so that we can record a good result in Benin in the 2nd leg. “He added
“Like I keep saying in all my interviews, we can’t afford to miss out on the competition again so have to do our best in Benin to get a good result that will see our progression to the next stage of the qualifiers. “He stated
Ghana head into the second leg at Stade René Pleven d’Akpakpa in Cotonou next Friday, August 10 with a 3-1 advantage.
The aggregate winner of this tie takes the final ticket to next year’s U-20 Afcon in Niger.
Story by Aaron Kontoh
