Ghana – Zambia qualifier shifted to Sept. 7

Footy-ghana.com can exclusively reveal that the 2014 World Cup qualifier between Ghana’s Black Stars and the Chipolopolo of Zambia has been rescheduled for Saturday September 7 2013 in Kumasi.

The match was originally scheduled to take place a day earlier at the same venue, because of a scheduled friendly match between Ghana and Japan on September 10.

It will be recalled that in an article on this site, footy-ghana.com editor-in-chief Christopher Opoku argued that playing the Zambia match on Friday September 6 would leave the Black Stars with less than adequate preparation time because of the time the players would arrive from their respective bases abroad.

In response, the President of the Ghana Football Association, Kwasi Nyantakyi defended the decision to play the World Cup qualifier on September 6, explaining that amongst other things, the technical staff had okayed the date.

Footy-ghana.com has, however, learnt that Black Stars head coach Kwasi Appiah has had feedback from some of the players he would invite for the crucial game indicating their time of arrival in the country ahead of the match.

According to our sources, some of the players told Appiah that they could only arrive on Tuesday night, leaving little time for preparation before the match. Appiah then contacted the Black Stars management committee to ask for the match to be pushed to Saturday to give him more time with the team.

Footy-ghana.com can confirm that Black Stars management committee agreed to Appiah’s request, thus shifting the match to Saturday September 7.

Footy-ghana.com understands that the Black Stars would leave immediately after the game to travel to Japan for the friendly match on September 10.