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Ghana captain Andre Ayew says the Black Stars were successful during their 2010 major tournaments because the squad included a number of the players from the 2009 U-20 World Cup winning side which had bonded together for years.
Having made history as the first and only African country to have won the U-20 World Cup in Egypt, the Black Stars coach at the time, Milovan Rajevac, invited a number of the Black Satellites including Andre Ayew for the team’s Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Angola as well as the World Cup tournament both in 2010.
While Ghana made it to the final of the AFCON for the first time in 18 years, the became the third African country to reach the last eight of the World Cup.
The Nottingham Forest player believes the team’s unity, combined with their success with the Black Satellites, aided their transition to the Black Stars which eventually yielded positive results.
“What many people forget is that before the World Cup in South Africa, there was the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations in Angola, where we went all the way to the final,” Ayew told FIFA.
“We ended up losing in the dying minutes to Egypt with nine of the victorious players from the U-20 World Cup three months earlier. We were on the verge of achieving a historic double.”
“The fact that we were so united at the U-20 World Cup helped us tremendously. We knew each other and that showed at the World Cup in South Africa. We were playing at home, so to speak, in our continent, so we could not disappoint.”
“We were ready and had more full internationals under our belt, so it was no surprise that we made it all the way to the quarters. We could have gone further, but it’s part of our history now.”