Ghana: defensive, cohesive and underrated
Ghana's probably first XI
“Tactically naive” is the common criticism for any African side which fails, generally regardless of the nature of their defeat or their manager’s tactical acumen. Ghana showed at the Africa Nations Cup earlier this year that they are anything but tactically naive.
As if to emphasize what a silly criticism it is, Ghana were then labelled boring and defensive for daring to set out in a fashion that might maximise their chances of victory. It nearly was an overall victory – they were defeated in the final by an Egpyt side which didn’t qualify for this World Cup, but overall Ghana emerged from the tournament with their reputation enhanced more than any other side, especially after Michael Essien became injured against the Ivory Coast.
They will be forced to cope without him for this tournament too. Captain and unquestionably the most talented player, Essien’s absence is huge. The positive is that central midfield is an area of the pitch Ghana are well-stocked in, and neither their formation or system will have to significantly change in response to his injury.
The starting XI
They will set out with a lone striker, Asamoah Gyan, a player better at running the channels than finding the net. He is a good footballer who will cause sides problems, but his lack of goals are part of the reason Ghana are seen as slightly boring.
It doesn’t help, either, that they often play with only one winger – generally on the right, where the small, tricky Andre Ayew (the son of the legendary Abedi Pele) will be stationed, providing the most direct attacking threat from midfield. They could play Kwadwo Asamoah on the left to offer a threat from both sides, but it is more likely they will play an off-centre diamond of four physical central midfielders.
A possible, more attacking alternative shape, featuring two natural wingers
Inter’s Sulley Muntari will start on the left-hand side, offering technical quality and plenty of running, but relatively little creativity for a player with a big attacking responsibility. The pattern is repeated in the centre where Stephen Appiah plays more advanced than he has for much of his club career, fitting a pattern at this tournament of African central midfielders pushed forward into unorthodox playmaker roles.
Anthony Annan is a classic holding player in front of the defence, and the final central midfielder is a Boateng – Derek, not Kevin-Prince – who provides a box-to-box presence. It’s hard to imagine a European or South American side playing with four such similar central midfielders in one side, but Ghana start as the underdogs in a tough group, and will look to physically impose themselves in the centre of the pitch.
The back four are defensive-minded with the full-backs rarely getting themselves into attacking positions. John Paintstil will hope to start on the left of the defence, though he faces competition from Lee Addy – a relative unknown, as the only outfield player who plays club football in his home country.
Conclusion
Ghana were more likely to make an impact on the world with their results rather than their playing style, but their place in a tough group and the loss of Essien makes it hard to see them progressing.
Nevertheless, Milovan Rajevac’s side are well-organised and will be difficult to beat – the same could be said of their opening day opponents Serbia, and Group D could turn out to be very low-scoring.
Ghana: defensive, cohesive and underrated
I think Germany is a clear favourite to win this group (they have some great attacking talent).
Group D is starting to look more and more like it will be the least interesting group. Serbia and Ghana will fight it out for second place, possibly even pip Germany to top spot in the group.
Which of the Ghanaians hasn’t played for the past 2 years? Looking it up suggests it’s Asamoah Gyan who is at Rennes. Please correct me if I’m wrong here.
I have Serbia winning the group, Germany second.
@Rocco that player is Stephen Appiah.
Is Paintsil really going to be on the left? Paintsil has played on the left (as well as in the centre) for Fulham and to be honest he hasn’t been that good. He defends OK (but can get caught) but rarely got forward. On the right he was one of the best right-backs in the league.
He’s certainly better on the right, but so are Ghana’s options overall…looks more likely to be on the left.
err ZM ?
what wud you call that formation ? In the first diagram ?
I wonder if Ghana coach Rajevac will be well-suited to take on the Serbs, considering he’s Serbian himself.
Stephen Appiah is the actual captain With John Mensah serving as vice captain. Essien is Ghana`s talisman and is clearly in line to be captain after Appiah`s international retirement. Kwadwo Asamoah happens to a more attacking inclined than essien could step in to help cushion the crushing loss of Essien. Watch out for Lee Addy, he is an attacking fullback and could help out a narrow team.
I saw Ghana against the Netherlands. Solid team, difficult to score goals. Their weakest position is the goalkeeper, a very bad match of Kingson.
I think Group D will be relative uninteresting. Australia and Ghana are quite defensive, Serbia is out of form at the moment and Germany has to show that they have chances to win without many key-players like Ballack or Adler.
Btw: I think it is Hans Sarpei from Bayer Leverkusen who will probably start on left-back position.
Kwadwo Asamoah is a very promising playmaker who did well at the ACON this year. I can imagine he’d play more centrally as the “in-between” midfielder if Ghana are struggling for creativity.
While I agree with the general conclusion the analysis is rather shallow. Sarpei or Addy are likely to start at left back, Paintsil never played there and there is no reason to expect that to change. Calling Inkoom defensive minded is pretty hilarious to be honest.
On the right wing Rajevac prefers the hard working Prince Tagoe, with the exception of some fooling around with the depleted squad at the nations cup Ayew plays on the left wing only and may even bench Muntari based on the recent performances of both players. Sulley tends to step up in the big games though, so I wouldn’t write him off just yet.
Derek Boateng never performed for the seniour Black Stars, him starting would be a pretty big surprise. He just doesn’t click with the rest of the midfield and desperately lacks composure and urgency in his game. Kwadwo Asamoah has been played as a central attacking midfielder so far. With Muntari and Ayew as options on the left wing I don’t see that changing either.
With the exception of Kingston for Adjei, maybe Painstil for Inkoom, maybe Sarpei for Addy and maybe Muntari for Ayew the starting line up of the Latvia friendly will most likely be the first eleven for the World Cup as well.
Thank you. I enjoy ZM very much but that analysis of my Black Stars was painful to read.
Appiah is NOT starting, put Kwadwo Asamoah there
Derek Boateng is NOT starting, put in Kevin-Prince Boateng
Ayew will start in left mid and Prince Tagoe (Hoffenheim) will be on the right.
I don’t recall the last time Paintsil played on the left for us, Lee Addy will most likely start there.
As a Serb. I believe Ghana will be the deciding match in our group. We will likely beat Australia, and maybe grind a draw against Germany, but if we can beat Ghana, we can go through.
Of course, the thing with Group D is that no one side is an underdog, and not even Germany is a clear winner. The Germans are currently fairly weak, especially without Ballack, and Low isn’t that good a manager. They could easily be beaten by the any other team in the group if they have a bad time.
But I’m not making any predictions about Group D. Anything can happen in that group, I can only hope the Serbs win, but I’d be over the moon if we got out of the Group. Anything after that would be a dream.
Group D has three very defence-focussed teams (all except Germany). I can see most matches being decided 1-0, or being 0-0 or 1-1 draws. Serbia, Ghana and Australia could all easily draw their matches 0-0 or 1-1. The Germany/Serbia match is the most likely to have more than 2 goals in it. And like Fedor says, Germany are no certainties either. I’m sure all three of their rivals would aim to score first and then ‘park the bus’ for a vital 1-0 win. I think the Germans and Serbia should advance, but I have a suspicion it could be a group decided on goal difference/goals scored.
Given the importance of GD I should think both Serbia and Ghana will take more risks against Australia. Scoring more than 2 goals against the weaker squad of the group could prove highly rewarding.
Australia are very competent defensively. In the final World Cup qualifying group in Asia, Australia conceded 1 goal (vs Japan) in 8 matches (6 wins/2 draws). They play one forward, the 1.94m Josh Kennedy, and rely on the likes of midfielders Tim Cahill and Harry Kewell to play off him. Their tactics are very defensive and unadventurous. So I think if Serbia and, particularly, Ghana were 1-0 vs Australia, they would be content to play conservatively and settle for the one-goal win, not wanting to lose a goal on the counter to the Aussies. Of course, Serbia play Australia last, so the situation of the group will dictate their tactics. I actually think the weakest team in the group is Ghana. Perhaps the loss of Essien doesn’t affect their tactics, but he is the engine of the team, and they really lack drive/momentum without him. Appiah or Muntari aren’t half the player he is.
While somewhat shaky at the back, this year’s Germany do always look like they are able to score and even more so against deep lying opponents. Cf. Germany’s last game against Bosnia who did exactly what Baxter proposed – stopped playing after scoring.
Last EURO showed a few valuable lessons how to play against Germany – by copying their style, i.e. by applying aggressive pressing on their defence during the build up. The transition of the ball from the centrehalves to the attacking midfielders has always been a problem for Germany which used to be solved by long passes earlier. This has changed under Klinsmann but the build-up, not the creating of chances proper, remains a weak point.
Still, to really put Germany in trouble, Serbia, Ghana, and Australia would have to hold out such an exhausting style of play for a majority of the game AND cope with fast, technically skilled and above all variable players like Özil, Marin and Khedira once they have the ball on their feet. I cannot see Ghana and Australia doing the latter. Particularly Australia can take a hell of a beating if they fail to score first.
this is off-topic but I wasn’t sure where else to ask, what program do you use to create the diagrams that denote player positions?
Word
I think he said once that he is using Microsoft Word
It is strange that people say Low isn’t a good manager. He has the best statistics of all Bundestrainer. Germany should win the group if nothing strange happens. But this is the FIFA system, even Brasil should win their group.
Exactly. I think Germany has the bast coach they had for years. Further they have the best team since the 90s. After years of being ashamed to watch the games, they finally play good football. If they get a good result against Australia, they’ll surely win the group. Quarterfinal against England or USA should also be possible to go through.
Germany has an incredibly talented young crop of attacking midfielders that will likely slice open any defensive side they are about to encounter in the group stage.
The current weak spots are out of form strikers Klose, Gomez and Kießling, neither of them have performed well in the tests building up to the world cup.
The other two strikers will play wing positions instead, judging from the recent games, Podolski will start left, Müller will start right.
Marin will push both of them for a spot in the lineup and if he does not make it into the starting line up, you can expect him to be regularly swapped in early 2nd half (either for Podolski who has shown a tendency for coasting, or for Müller if tired).
The 6th striker, Cacau has looked incredible in the last months and has clicked very well with the aforementioned wingers and AMC Özil in Germany’s last tests.
At this point I would predict Löw to start Klose regardless in the game against Australia, hoping that he gets a lucky goal and regains self-confidence which would be key to a long tournament for Germany. If Klose continues to look as bad as he has in this injury-plagued season for him so far, Cacau will likely be swapped in for Klose come 2nd half against Australia.
So Klose basically has 45 mins left to proof his 10 world cup goals will not be his last, where as Brazil-born Cacau will watch from the bench and be ready to explode the minute brought on.
The other big questionmark is the left full-back position as Lahm is likely going to start his first tourney on the opposite side. Löw tested two inexperienced young players, which both have played better than expected in the recent tests.
Aogo (Hamburg) has an offensive upside, where as Badstuber (Bayern) has played mainly center back in Bayerns youth system and has only been given the left-back position by van Gaal after all other applicants failed to impress (Netherlands Braafdheid was loaned out midseason, Croatia’s Pranjic played back up to Schweinsteiger/van Bommel). Consequently he has looked rather poor offensively, but could win the starting role due to his solid defensive play.
Podolski is not comfortable to help out much defensively so one can predict Badstuber could get the nod over Aogo for this very reason.
Now there are still more options though. There is also Jansen who has played for Germany before but is just getting back into shape from a long going injury. He played very well as left-wing for Hamburg and formerly did at least play well offensively as left back.
And last but not least Lahm could start as left full-back again, and we would see Boateng as right full-back instead…
As far as the remaining spots are concerned, Schweinsteiger/Khedira will play DM. While neither of them can fully replace Ballack in the leadership position, both of them had good seasons with their clubs and will do just fine for the national team. The only problem would be an injury here, as no real back up remains and would likely ask others to play out of position (e.g. AM Kroos, full-backs Aogo/Lahm/Badstuber)
CB Mertesacker did look surprisingly weak in tests, and could have some trouble against fast, agile strikers, but along with Friedrich the air should be sealed tight, so don’t expect much danger for Germany there.
GK Neuer is young but very talented, able to pass and throw very well and will likely attempt to speed up the play for counters against more offensively minded teams (just don’t expect too much advantage out of this in the group stage). If anything this tourney might be two years too early for him, but he is a worthy successor of the Kahn/Lehmann era (after Enke’s suicide, and Adler’s injury he basically went from #3 to #1 within half a year).
Expect this starting line-up against Australia from Löw. As a fan, if you ignore past performances, you’d want Cacau in Klose’s spot and Marin in Podolski’s but as described above this just won’t happen prior to 2nd half against Australia.
————-Neuer——————
Lahm-Friedrich-Mertesacker-Badstuber
——Khedira—–Schweinsteiger—-
Müller——-Özil———–Podolski
————-Klose——————
Excellent analysis of the German squad and situation, just some minor squabbles:
Friedrich is distinctly average when it comes to aerial balls, but has a lot of pace and agility for a central defender, as well as being a decent passer of the ball. That’s probably a remainder of his past as a full back. Anyway, him and Mertesacker are complementing each other extremely well. Adding Lahm, Badstuber/Boateng and Schweinsteiger in his new role as holding midfielder Germany’s defense could be much more solid than most people expect.
Boateng is just as stable in defense as Badstuber is and offers the occasional ingenious ball forward and a fearsome but unplaced long shot. He’s always been better on the left than on the right, his primary positions are the defensive midfield and the central defense though, but then again Badstuber is a converted centre half as well.
And finally, Marin is the perfect super sub. Mueller’s work rate and tactical discipline make him the better starter in my book and while I would prefer Jansen on the left wing Podolski keeps bagging scorer points galore even when performing poorly overall. Bringing Marin on in the second half against tired defenses can be a game changer and while players and fans may not always appreciate it fully that’s an extremely important role within a squad.
Well put, agree on all points, especially Friedrich/Mertesacker.
Regarding Boateng, he played alright at best against Argentina back in March (though Lahm & him did better than CB’s in that game) and Hungary in May (worst player among defensive line in that game) in the tests leading up to the tourney. Argentina obviously was the more interesting test.
Badstuber on the other hand just played okay in his first game in the starting line up against Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is doubtful that he would have done much better against Argentina ;=)
Badstuber’s weakest game of the season was against ManU, but luckily for him he will not have to face Ecuadorian winger Valencia in the World Cup. Looking at group match ups, he is unlikely to encounter wingers of similar skill level prior to the quarter finals. Nevertheless, should he start, I am sure the national team coaches of the other teams have watched that ManU-Bayern game and seen his weaknesses.
Personally, I’d still be more comfortable with Badstuber though.
Marin definitely is the perfect sub, and for that very reason we will see him coming from the bench. As you point out, he just adds a valuable tactical dynamic for Löw, a sub hot from the get go is very important for a coach.
As pointed out in my earlier post I fear that Germany’s strikers lack that sort of dynamic at the moment – except for Cacau – again the same reason Klose could yet again start despite his lack of form.
Cheers both for the Germany analysis and I look forward to ZM’s take. I think Marin could really up his value in this WC, such a great player to watch and he could be one of the “surprises” although he’s probably no surprise to Germans, I don’t think he’s particularly known in the UK..
Ozil and Kroos will also be great to watch.
Yeah, I am sure the feeling is the same everywhere, excitement is growing fast. Can’t wait =)))
Looking forward to ZM’s take as well. I came here first to get a few pointers for fantasy football, and stayed for so many great articles, awesome analysis all over! Also like the the comment sections where true fans of their teams give insights that the visitor from afar just won’t have. It just makes a ton of difference to have seen a team (or player) in a few games at best in opposite to having watched them for seasons. Ah and France just got posted, sweet!
Now as far as Germany is concerned, the latest Löw media tidbits have him rating Gomez (striker, boosting his confidence) as well as Jansen highly (speaking of chances of starting as left full-back against Australia).
I’m still waiting for the ZM analysis of the German team, so I won’t tell you my opinion here.
But two points I have to say (two reasons why Germany doesn’t win the WC and I’m not sad about it):
1. The German team is young and I think in four years they will be very good. Now, there are better teams in the world at this World Cup and the young guns from Germany will learn a lot. So I’m hoping for the next Euro and WC.
2. We (Germany) won the Eurovision Song Contest this year, this is enough joy and success for one country. I’m not sure Germany is able to take much more success in one year, especially with the political stuff going on right now. The big difference between success (football and singing) and the political and economic chaos (in Germany and Europe)would be too extreme. And our politicans should go to work and not celebrate with Low, Schweinsteiger, Khedira or lovely Lena.
Muntari absolutely has to stay inside. His speed doesn’t match his passing range, so his strength is in the middle. It was tough for him to get a game at Inter this year, so hopefully his confidence going into a World Cup is high despite the fact he hasn’t seen much time on the pitch.
Also, don’t discount impact subs such as Quincy coming off the bench to great effect with his pace and straight-forward approach. I wonder about his ability do deliver proper service but he is the type of player that can inject some life into a match.
Under Milo’s predecessor Dujovic Muntari was tested in the centre several times. It was a desaster every single time including the painful loss to Cameroon in the semi final of the 2008 edition of the African Cup of Nations in Ghana. ( John Mensah was suspended and the technical team didn’t take a single match fit CB replacement, resulting in Essien playing at the back and Muntari being shifted to the centre ).
I agree that Sulley’s abilities seem better suited to a central position, for Ghana he has only ever performed on the wing or in a halfwing position like in the diamond formation the Black Stars used to play though.