Black Stars head coach, Otto Addo has addressed his decision to make late substitutions during Thursday’s match against Angola.
Ghana suffered a defeat in their opening game of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifiers with Felicio Milson scoring a late goal to secure the win for the visitors.
Addo only made substitutions in the final ten minutes, bringing on Joseph Painstil, Majeed Ashimeru, and Inaki Williams. This late change did not yield the desired results.
Speaking after the game, the 45-year-old coach explained that the team’s performance at the start of the second half complicated his decision to substitute earlier.
“I know that if I had changed earlier, people would have said, why did you change? Whatever you do, I know when you lose, you’re the bad guy. But I take it. After the game, everybody knows more and maybe we could have done better in changing,” he said after the game.
“I’ll think about it I’ll take it home and think about it but like I said the second half to be honest was really, really good. We had the right positions. In the first half, we had some problems, I talked with Alidu Seidu, he was too high so he had to come back,” he added.
He continued, “We took better positions in between the lines and the player played well. We break them down to the half and we didn’t allow too many counter situations even though there were some which were also dangerous and yeah, like I said, football is sometimes like that.
“We were lucky maybe a little bit even though we deserved to win in Mali. But there we scored a goal and won and today Angola scored a goal. But I can just repeat myself, I think at least a draw would have been deserved,” he added.
The Black Stars will look to recover from this defeat when they face Niger at the RS Berkane Stadium in Morocco.
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