Carlos Queiroz’s World Cup campaign with Ghana came to an end on Friday evening, with the veteran boss admitting that Colombia deservedly defeated his team 1-0 in the last-32 knockout round.
An early goal by Jhon Arias (14’) proved decisive in Kansas City, with Ghana largely struggling to respond to the setback. The Black Stars failed to register a shot on target across the encounter, having reached the knockout stages of the World Cup for the first time since their quarter-final run in 2010.
Ghana were underdogs coming into the match and their task was made all the more difficult when influential defender Marvin Senaya was forced off with injury after 13 minutes. The absence of right-back Senaya was felt immediately, with Ghana conceding the goal just moments after his withdrawal when Colombia over-loaded on their left side for Arias to score the only goal.
“It was an intense game, tough game for both teams as I expected,” Queiroz said during his post-match press conference. “Colombia started the game as we expected, as we have seen them start the games, with full speed, a lot of intensity, passing. We tried to answer to Colombia and stop them.
“But unfortunately, the goal came too early for us. It was a difficult moment for us. We lost the right-back, the [substitute] player when he came on was not on top of the game. It took some time for us to adjust and recover from that substitution. And the goal came at exactly the moment we tried to resettle our team.
“After that, we were chasing the game against a Colombia team moving the ball in a much better, more coherent way. My players tried as much as possible, we ran a lot, we tried to fight a lot. But on the day I think Colombia was the better team generally speaking and they deserved to win the qualification.
“I must say that the 12th player played a big role. The stadium was Colombian. It was Colombia playing at home. That support gave the Colombia team an advantage and confidence from the beginning of the game. We were ready for that, we were prepared for that.
“Until that moment [and the goal] we were doing our job perfectly. Senaya got injured and it took us a couple of minutes to adjust our positions. In normal conditions I’m absolute convinced that goal doesn’t happen. But that’s football. We can’t do anything about that. Colombia scored in that moment and after that we had to chase the result.
“We tried our best. It was difficult for us to recover control. Second half we improved, we created much more problems in attacking positions. But we were never really in control of the game. And our opportunities didn’t come. They created more opportunities. We made a lot of effort, but Colombia was the best team on the pitch and deserve to move forward.”
"We played against ourselves"
The west Africans leave the World Cup having qualified comfortably from their group with four points, thanks to a 1-0 win over Panama and an impressively resolute goalless draw against England. It was put to Queiroz that over a quarter of his squad are under the age of 23, with a journalist asking what the Ghana players can learn from their experience.
“The Ghana team is a very young team, we need more experience and especially we need time for some players to gain maturity," said the 73-year-old. "When you play this type of competitions, at this level, you can’t only count on the enthusiasm of youth.
“The enthusiasm is nice, it brings you a lot of impromptu things in the game. But when it’s time to make crucial decisions, like for instance in the middle of the park: controlling the ball against the opponent, it’s not time to dribble, take three touches, because when you do that in a game like this you get caught and lose the ball.
“This happened a lot for instance in the game today. Worse than facing the quality of Colombia, was when we played against ourselves. We can try to control the opponents with good defending, good organisation, good discipline. But it’s difficult when we’re playing against ourselves. Bad passes that isolate the forward, lost passes in dangerous situations.
“If you see 90% of the opportunities of Colombia, they come from mistakes in our midfield when we lost the ball. But that maturity and experience you can only earn with more matches. You have to throw the players into high level competitions for them to learn.”
