Ghana target winning start

Ghana will be seeking nothing less than a win against Mauritius when the sides clash in their Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) qualifier in Accra on Sunday.

“We intend to approach the match with the mentality to get all the points from it. This is a qualifier and experience has taught us every point is useful,” said midfielder Emmanuel Agyemang Badu. Starting well in their first fixture in their qualification campaign for the 2017 Afcon would be important according to Badu.

“Normally, qualifiers can be tricky, especially because we are in a league format. For us, we have decided not to depend on any ifs or buts. We want to take our destiny into our own hands and qualify as quickly as possible,” said Badu.

“We will rather qualify well in time than depend on calculations or arithmetic’s later on. This means we must start getting every point out of every match and off each team we approach and that starts with Mauritius.” Badu insisted being tagged favourites for the match would not help their team achieve a positive result.

“We are not walking into this match thinking we are favourites and that Mauritius are the underdogs. It does not matter to us because football has and is changing a lot. With many teams improving always, it is a negative thing to over duel on a supposed advantage because of pedigree. It always comes down to 90-minutes for both teams and it is exactly how both sets of players will do within that time.”

Mozambique will take on Rwanda in the other Group H clash in Maputo.