Otto Addo: I’m still confident in Black Stars

Ghana’s coach, Otto Addo, commended his team’s resilience in the second half despite playing with 10 men during their 2-1 defeat to Nigeria in a friendly match.

Addressing the media after the game in Marrakesh, Addo praised his team’s efforts but lamented the manner in which they conceded the first goal. While admitting Nigeria’s early dominance, Addo highlighted Ghana’s improvement later in the match.

Despite losing defender Jerome Opoku to a disputed red card, Ghana maintained control and created scoring chances in Nigeria’s half.

Reflecting on the match, Addo acknowledged the unfortunate nature of conceding the first goal due to a handball but refrained from dwelling too much on the positives due to the loss.

“I prefer not to dwell too much on the positives because we lost. However, I think we were unlucky with the way we conceded the first goal as the ball hit the hand, but as I said, we were unlucky.”

In the first half, they had the better chances, but in the second half, we performed admirably. If we focus on the positive aspects, our performance with 10 men in the second half was commendable.

“We managed to control them; we were just unfortunate with our finishing. The second goal they scored hurt us because we were close to equalizing. Overall, a draw would have been fair, but as I mentioned, we lost, and now we need to focus on improvement and moving forward,” he added.

Focus now moves to Ghana’s upcoming match against Uganda on Tuesday, once again set to be held in Marrakesh.