By Ghanaman
Mohammed Kudus has reinforced the belief that the Ghana’s participation at the 34th edition of the African Cup of Nations is to win the tournament.
The Black Stars last hoisted the trophy 42 years ago and have been perennial underachievers since then, including a disastrous group stage exit during the last edition.
However, speaking after bagging a Man of The Match Award in a 2-2 draw against 7-time champions, Egypt on Thursday night, the West Ham player insists their mission in The Ivory Coast is to add to their four continental titles:
“The ultimate goal for all of us is to lift the trophy, but the sub goal for us is to get out of the group, so the focus is on one game at a time.
Like I said, the ultimate goal is to win the trophy, that is the aim we came here with; but we can’t look far ahead of us, so we just need to take it one game at a time”.
The 23-year old passed a late fitness test to put Ghana in front twice at the Felix Houphouet Boigny stadium in Abidjan, but had his teammate to thank as The Pharoahs clawed their way back on both occasions due to costly errors at the back:
“It’s a mixed feeling because as an attacking player, you want your goals to reflect on the result but we got a point today.
I felt we deserved more because the goals they scored were from silly mistakes from us which we need to learn from”.
Capped 31 times at international level with 11 goals to his name, Kudus reiterated the players’ desires to leave no stone unturned in their bid to make it out of Group B:
“It is very possible, until we finish the last group game, it is the same focus. You could see the energy and the fighting spirit from the guys today. We have to do more than that in the last game because we have to get the 3 points at all cost and we’ll see what happens after that.
Thursday’s 2-2 draw against Egypt also meant the Black Stars are yet to win in 6 Afcon matches (losing 3 and drawing the other 3), their longest winless streak in the tournament; with their last victory coming against Guinea-Bissau at the 2019 edition held in Egypt, a 2-0 win in their final group game at the time.
Ghana will slug it out with Mozambique on Monday, 22nd January with Egypt doing battle with Cape Verde simultaneously on the same day.
