{"id":323210,"date":"2016-10-13T22:23:46","date_gmt":"2016-10-13T22:23:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ghana-mma.com\/2016\/10\/13\/players-must-take-blame-for-ghanas-poor-start-damba\/"},"modified":"2016-10-13T22:23:46","modified_gmt":"2016-10-13T22:23:46","slug":"players-must-take-blame-for-ghanas-poor-start-damba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/10\/13\/players-must-take-blame-for-ghanas-poor-start-damba\/","title":{"rendered":"Players must take blame for Ghana\u2019s poor start &#8211; Damba"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"medsection1\">\n<!-- End of html generated by this->header() --><\/p>\n<p class=\"floatLeft\">Soccer News of Thursday, 13 October 2016<\/p>\n<p class=\"floatRight\"><strong>Source: <\/strong>Goal.com <\/p>\n<p>2016-10-13<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-left\">\n<p class=\"article-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/86791260.295.jpg\" alt=\"Abubakar Damba Dreams FC\" title=\"Abubakar Damba Dreams FC\" width=\"295\" height=\"223\" \/><span class=\"image_caption\"><span>Abukari Damba<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"clear:right\">Former Ghana star Abukari Damba says the Black Stars must take responsibility for their disappointing start to the 2018 Fifa World Cup qualifying.<\/p>\n<p>Playing at home at the Tamale Sports Stadium on Friday, Avram Grant\u2019s side were held to a goalless draw, leaving them two points behind group leaders Egypt, who picked a valuable 2-1 away win over Congo two days later.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith all fairness, I think we still have to congratulate the Black Stars for at least picking a point, but it was not the best of games as far as they are concerned,\u201d Damba told Goal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI will not entirely blame the squad for what happened. We all saw that the pitch was not in the best of conditions, so did not allow the Stars to play their normal tactics; passing, quick play and all those kind of things.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThough the pitch was a problem, we need to call a spade a spade.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Friday\u2019s draw was the Black Stars\u2019 second successive home stalemate with the Cranes following a 1-1 deadlock in the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>Damba continued: \u201cWe created some decent chances which should have ended up at the back of the net. Someway, somehow, we could not get it there. Creating chances is one thing and getting the goals is another thing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had about eight set-pieces in the game, and what stopped us from converting at least one? They were not too far away from the Uganda goal area, so in this situation, I will say we need to blame ourselves. But nothing is lost.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ghana play away to Egypt in their next qualifier on November 13 and a defeat will leave them trailing the Pharaohs by five points.<\/p>\n<div class=\"related_articles\" style=\"width: 100%;\">\n<div style=\"clear: both; font-size: 90%; background-color: #eeeaea; padding: 5px; width: 60%; margin-top: 10px;\">\n<table width=\"100%\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\">\n<tr>\n<td style=\"border:0; padding:0\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/53372278.jpg\" style=\"padding-right:2px;\" \/><\/td>\n<td style=\"border:0; padding:0;width:100%; vertical-align:middle; font-size:11px;\">Courtesy of Goal.com &#8211; the world&#8217;s largest football website.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p><strong>Comments:<\/strong><br \/>\nThis article has no comments yet, be the first to comment\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- uploaded by: 6 updated by: -1 --><\/p>\n<p><!-- Start of html generated by this->footer() -->\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Soccer News of Thursday, 13 October 2016 Source: Goal.com 2016-10-13 Abukari Damba Former Ghana star Abukari Damba says the Black Stars must take responsibility for their disappointing start to the 2018 Fifa World Cup qualifying. Playing at home at the Tamale Sports Stadium on Friday, Avram Grant\u2019s side were held to a goalless draw, leaving [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-323210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Players must take blame for Ghana\u2019s poor start - Damba - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/10\/13\/players-must-take-blame-for-ghanas-poor-start-damba\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Players must take blame for Ghana\u2019s poor start - Damba - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Soccer News of Thursday, 13 October 2016 Source: Goal.com 2016-10-13 Abukari Damba Former Ghana star Abukari Damba says the Black Stars must take responsibility for their disappointing start to the 2018 Fifa World Cup qualifying. 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Playing at home at the Tamale Sports Stadium on Friday, Avram Grant\u2019s side were held to a goalless draw, leaving [&hellip;]","twitter_image":"http:\/\/ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/86791260.295.jpg","twitter_creator":"@ghanamma","twitter_site":"@ghanamma","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/10\/13\/players-must-take-blame-for-ghanas-poor-start-damba\/","url":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/10\/13\/players-must-take-blame-for-ghanas-poor-start-damba\/","name":"Players must take blame for Ghana\u2019s poor start - Damba - Ghanamma.com","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/10\/13\/players-must-take-blame-for-ghanas-poor-start-damba\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/10\/13\/players-must-take-blame-for-ghanas-poor-start-damba\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/86791260.295.jpg","datePublished":"2016-10-13T22:23:46+00:00","dateModified":"2016-10-13T22:23:46+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/10\/13\/players-must-take-blame-for-ghanas-poor-start-damba\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/10\/13\/players-must-take-blame-for-ghanas-poor-start-damba\/#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/86791260.295.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/86791260.295.jpg"},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/","name":"Ghanamma.com","description":"News In Ghana - Latest Ghana News Headlines","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}