Andre Ayew rallies Black Stars players for ‘difficult’ qualifiers

Andre Dede Ayew has implored his Black Stars teammates to anticipate a difficult qualifying process to the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations to be staged in Cameroon.

The four-time champions will have to negotiate their way through Group C where they are paired with South Africa, Sudan as well as São Tomé and Principe.

Black Stars will kick off their campaign in Group C at home – the Cape Coast Sports Stadium – to South Africa on Thursday night.

Assessing their chances for one of the two available slots to Cameroon 2021, Ayew told the media:

“Sudan are a very tough team; we have met them a few times.

“[For] South Africa, we have met them a lot of times. Right now, every team has its qualities so we have to block their qualities and use ours because at the end of the day we have great players.

“We have players who have confidence. We have players who want to prove a point and we have people who just want to die for the nation. We have to realize that we are playing for millions of people.

“Football is a game of a win, draw or lose but we have to give everything. We have to die; we have to run; we have to play and make sure that at the end of the day we can go home and look at ourselves and say we gave everything we had for the nation.

“It is not going to be easy. I can tell you that this qualification [process] is going to be very difficult but we will go through.”

Ghana will also play São Tomé and Principe away in their second game of the Afcon 2021 qualifiers on Monday, November 18.